“Windows’ enterprise adoption declined in 2007, with the gains going to Linux and Mac OS. Vista is a bust. Forrester published the data on Thursday, but only released it publicly today. Forrester surveyed a whopping 50,000 users at 2,300-plus large to very large enterprises throughout 2007. Windows’ enterprise adoption declined 3.7 percent, going from 98.6 percent in January to 94.9 percent in December. Mac OS gained 3 percent, going from 1.2 percent to 4.2 percent in the same time frame. Linux gained 0.5 percent in 2007.” A classic case of ‘do with it as you please’.
Who would’ve thought Vista would be such a disaster?
Hmm, all of us? :p
Anybody who installed it, particularly the 64bit version?
The thing Windows had going for it was that drivers where abundant for the crappy hardware out there and software usually worked. If you couldn’t find a driver your hardware was either extremely old or total crap. Windows Vista violated the two good things about Windows and without them, little else is left.
Edited 2008-03-31 23:19 UTC
Prophets of doom (Media, competitors)?
😉
A 3.7% decline per year accrues to 18.5% in five years, which is not insignificant at all.
Whether this trend continues to materialize is anybody’s guess, but I think that change will continue to be steady but slow. This makes it both likely that the change will be enduring and that the perception that things have changed will not take hold overnight.
By the time it becomes common knowledge, I am hoping to be a part of a richer, more diverse and more balanced computing landscape.
Having said that, I am not sure I would want to trade Microsoft for Apple as a monopolist. A predominantly open source world would be my ideal, but even a fair split among all three platforms would be a huge advancement.
I’m with you on that. Apple would be a far worse master than MS. Apple behaves like a monopolist, locks out competition, and does dirty trick when they don’t even have a 10% market share. Just imagine how bad it would be if they were a monopoly.
What evidence do you have to back up such baseless accusations?
Have you been sleeping under a rock?
Just look at Apple’s general attitude. Locking down iPod’s firmware just so tech enthusiasts can’t get their own firmware running. Look at their attitude towards licensing “fairplay”. Damn, look at any of their policies, Apple is all about lock-in, hurting tech enthusiasts and maintaining control.
Wintermute summed up the answer so nicely. Apple is not a nice company. As an ex Apple Australia employee, my memories of them are not fond, both as a company, and as a purveyor of products. The phrases “rotten to the core” or “bad apple” spring to mind.
Apple sues anyone who looks at them sideways, hell, I’m sure Steve Jobs would sue a Fly on a wall in the dunny for supposed trade secret infringements!
Apple is a huge supporter of DRM, has used and abused open source in the past (KHTML), it’s a nasty company that despite some nice products, deserves to go bankrupt for being so anti competitive and nasty.
As an end user, I have non fond memories of Apple’s supposed warranty on the 2nd gen iPod mini battery issues – basically being forced to agree to their TOC – i.e. if they can’t fault it they’ll charge me over AU $100 for testing it! If you don’t agree to those TOC, they won’t service it. Nice eh? I didn’t bother fighting this in court, but I should have, and there’s no way Apple Australia would have won. The other issue was postal costs, Apple wanted to charge over AU $22 for that privilege, where I could have sent the damn item back registered post with a signature required and insurace for half that cost. In Australia, that is illegal under the Trade Practices Act 1974. Apple Australia had a tonne of complaints against it with the ACCC for the exact same thing, and the ACCC was not impressed with them for making life difficult. Typical Apple.
A company deserves to be in business based on how it treats it customers, on that aspect, Apple should be bankrupt imho.
Dave
don’t even mention the iPhone debacle..
lock in anyone?
Dave
Have you heard of ‘carrier demands exclusive rights to sale’?
This is illegal in Australia.
In New Zealand it is perfectly legal to do so; but in alot of cases one doesn’t have much choice given the two carriers have completely different systems.
I’ve read about it in history books
Most countries seems to have dropped that sort of thing a long time ago.
They don’t need any evidence. After all, hating Apple is what all the cool kids do these days. Apple is an evil company that rips off open source projects while never contributing anything back. Let’s ignore Webkit, Darwin, GCC patches, etc. Apple is an evil company that sells DRMed music. Apple is evil because Fairplay doesn’t work on other music players despite the possibility of licensing it.
Apple is just a commercial entity like any other. They just rub geeks the wrong way, but for the majority of people Apple products are much better than the competition.
No, for the majority of people Microsoft products are much better than the competition.
Yeah, screw WebKit! Screw CUPS! Screw all the effort Apple put in to improve GCC instead of licensing proprietary, better performing compilers from IBM and Intel! Screw BASH’s improved POSIX compliance! Linux doesn’t benefit at all from these projects, because nobody uses Linux on PPC hardware or wants to print from within Linux or access artist info from Wikipedia inside Amarok 2.0! And POSIX is just for wussies!
Screw also the Darwin Calendar Server! Screw Bonjour! And screw all other projects from macosforge.org. It’s all evil crap under the very very nasty Apache License!
(PS: If you find pieces of irony in my post, you can keep it.)
Hehe, thanks for a much more comprehensive list of things that Apple does not contribute back to. Apple is so evil *shakes his fist*
Oh wait …
http://home.cs.tum.edu/siegel/news/2008_04_01-bye_bye_cheese
The mark of a good april-fool’s joke is that people are taken in by them.
http://home.cs.tum.edu/~siegel/news/2008_04_02-about_that_april_foo…
Errrr, Apple sues anyone who does anything with their software they don’t like, and they also sue people for even talking and speculating about future Apple products.
Well, yeah.. but who cares if it’s lookin’ good?
You know what this poll illustrates…
People don’t really want Open Source because it is not fulfilling a need.
The way I look at this is as follows. Apple and Linux both started in the same position (No market share). 10 years later, Apple is gaining mind share. Where’s Linux? Still trying to figure out which direction it needs to go to get out of the gate.
I think this says quite a bit about Linux, not Open Source. And in particular it says the Linux people better start getting their heads out of their butts.
They need to start looking at the Mozilla, or Apache Open Source models. Mozilla was left for dead and it actually came back and is thriving… That says quite a bit.
Oh, I guess you mean Ubuntu will thrive so much more when you stuff the menubar with Google ads?
Don’t you think the difference between full-fledged desktop operating systems, and web servers or browser apps, is that they’re, you know, sort of completely different things?
Microsoft is putting most of its energy into large enterprise business right now. They are selling the idea of seamless exchange of data between applications such as Sharepoint/Office/Dynamics GP/Dynamics AX/Dynamics CRM/SQL Server. Sharepoint and SQL Server are their glue. The idea is that Sharepoint can provide read/write access to any of the other applications. And, SQL Server stores the data and helps provide security.
If this plan works, their monopoly will be secure for years to come. If you thought an office document format sufficiently created vendor lock-in and dependence, just wait. If the plan fails, I think it’s Open Season on Microsoft.
Most large business own at least one of the previously mentioned Microsoft products. That being the case, it’s an easy sell for Microsoft to say, “Hey. You already own this application. It will do things for you that you are not taking advantage of, if you will just buy this app.”
I think their vision good. And, their tactics are clever. The concept of data being shared between applications makes sense. However, I would not want to rely on Microsoft to provide that integration for me.
I agree whole heartedly and feel sorry for any company that decides to start running the full stack. Add in Active Directory and Exchange 2007 and you have lock in central right there.
There are plenty of products out there that are better, do more and inter-operate at a more consistent rate then any of the products you mentioned, only they cost more. The biggest selling point, at least it seems so in my experience, is that MS offerings do 85-90% of what the competition’s offering do, at vastly reduced prices.
Of course, the reduction in price does not only come with a reduction in features, it also come with a reduction in freedom. Many a company has found themselves in a tough spot when trying to migrate away from an MS stack.
Yep. I forgot to mention AD and Exchange. They are integral pieces of the puzzle.
I disagree with you here. Microsoft products become more compelling the more you buy into their stack. If you are running end to end microsoft, you have alot of integration features you don’t really see anywhere else. The problems come in from doing a partial implementation, the more bits you add in that are not MS, the more features start dropping. Over the past few (i.e. 3 or so) years that scenario has been getting better, but it is still not that great.
Lock-in is not the Great Satan that people like to portray it as. Sure, buying a song off of iTunes locks you into an iPod, but the iTunes/iPod experience is pretty much unmatched. Same with IIS/ASP, there are all sorts of things that just work out of the box that take alot of time and effort in competing environments (before I was a .net guy, I was a java guy, so I am talking from experience here.)
I am not saying those kinds of stacks are the best for all situations, it really depends on your needs. But if you are in a position where you know you are not going to need to swap out one of the bits on a semi regular basis, it is worth evaluating the benefits in integration, compatibility, and (often) performance that a tightly coupled stack will give you.
Last point, I worked in a J2EE/Orion/Linux/Oracle shop for several years. Theoretically, we could have swapped out any piece if we needed to. In reality, java has platform specific bugs and optimization issues, and for a non trivial app it becomes a nightmare to switch platforms. Orion is a fantastic app server, but for non trivial apps, you are going to want to take advantage of the non standard bits. Anyone who uses a database in a serious way is going to need to use non ANSI features, and as soon as they do, you are tied to that db.
Now, I am not saying that it is the same sort of lock-in that you get from people like MS or Apple. But even on a standards based stack, it is not the land of hand-holding and kum-ba-ya singing freedom that people make it out to be. As soon as you talk about standards, you are generally talking about lowest common denominator protocols and APIs. It sucks, but thats just the way it is.
Excuse me but I fail to see how a decline from nearly 100 per cent to 95 per cent means “shaking of a monopoly”. 95 per cent means pretty much EVERY enterprise uses Windows.
Homeowner: Excuse me but I fail to see how finding a few termites means my house is in danger.
Sorry, but this is an invalid metaphor. It would be more like, “would my house crumble down if I used 5 per cent of concrete instead of bricks?”?
No sorry, his metaphor is the correct one. Termites eat away at your house, the competition is eating away at MS market share.
Concrete and bricks have nothing to do with it.
I had been cynical towards all the “OMG Vista is a DISASTER” rhetoric… until I had to do some support for a few machines running it.
UAC is as bad as its reputation. On the plus side, it’s probably silenced the Windows advocates who used to complain about OS X asking users for the admin password / the “horrors of authentication-fatigue.”
And in just half an hour on one machine, I had to resort to Google for three things that had changed since XP (for no apparent reason). Namely: the steps for creating a “my network place,” the location of the file association settings, and to find a way to re-enable the “Open With” right-click option/sub-menu (never did solve that one).
Then there’s the new UI for managing network connections – did that abomination get any user testing whatsoever? It’s easier to just use ipconfig from the command line than to try to make heads or tails of the new UI for network settings.
6-7 years ago we saw the same stories about WinXP and Win2000. Nobody likes WinXP, now everybody uses it. It will be the same for Vista. Windows marked share has been relatively stable since Win95/WinNT4. Vista will not change that. IT departments are too conservative for a real change.
Hmm… We’ll see… I’m not at all convinced.
The difference now is that 6-7 years ago, Linux was barely on the radar, as it were. Now, there’s not only Linux, but Haiku, Syllable and so on. Not only that, but PC retailers are starting to sell PCs preloaded with Linux. THAT is a big difference to 6-7 years ago.
Then there are the new low-cost PCs (eg Asus Eee and so on) that are absolutely ideal for Linux, BSD, etc. Let’s see Vista (or any other version of Windows) play in *that* market. That is yet another big difference to 6-7 years ago.
If Vista is such a smash hit, why is MS so keen to get Windows 7 out so soon? It’s obvious. Vista is becoming an absolute disaster. It is Microsoft Bob, version 2. Vista is the Edsel of operating systems.
If (despite the free and better alternatives) everybody is using Vista in 6-7 years, they deserve everything they get. Viruses, worms, crashes, the lot…. 🙂
– obsidian
Edited 2008-04-01 08:56 UTC
Linux is still barely on the radar! Linux is 0.6%, which is in fact still a statistical error. If you think that’s great after 10 years, wow imagine where Linux will be in another 10 years… 1.2%…
The real news here is that Apple is doing amazingly well. And the real news here is that people want things to work! They keep buying closed source…
The Linux share increased six fold over the year while the Mac share only increased three and a half times over the same period.
“Then there are the new low-cost PCs (eg Asus Eee and so on) that are absolutely ideal for Linux, BSD, etc. Let’s see Vista (or any other version of Windows) play in *that* market. That is yet another big difference to 6-7 years ago.”
Buddy of mine runs XP on his, it’s not too hard. No harder than installing Debian Lenny on it.
But even that is a stopgap for Microsoft. Selling new computers with old operating system does nothing to help convince people to upgrade their other machines to Vista and beyond.
And the other point was that these machines are so low in price that Microsoft can not ask much for the OS license. Together it means even if Microsoft becomes a major player in this market that the cash flow it is use to just is not there.
But even that is a stopgap for Microsoft. Selling new computers with old operating system does nothing to help convince people to upgrade their other machines to Vista and beyond.
And the other point was that these machines are so low in price that Microsoft can not ask much for the OS license. Together it means even if Microsoft becomes a major player in this market that the cash flow it is use to just is not there.
I doubt that’s how Microsoft have ever looked at OS share. To them, ownership is all. If you have your OS on the machine, then you now have an upgrade path to sell and the competition is shut out for good. I imagine they’d offer the OS at a loss on really low-end machines if they had to. I mean, look at all the shenanigans over the OLPC project. Enterprise sales are where Microsoft makes its money and where they’ll fight tooth and claw to protect their margins. The consumer world is a crapshoot by comparison: gazillions of low-rent, high-maintenance customers. It’s not as inviting as it sounds.
The problem however is that after all the debugging that has happened to WinXP, once users start using clean machines using XP how are they going to convince the user to upgrade their OS.
That I think is important. Microsoft *NEEDS* it’s cash! No large cash flows means no margin for error – and Microsoft is not know for it’s lack of errors.
No, it’s not because it’s about the enterprise. Enterprises have contracts with PC manufacturers like HP, Dell, IBM/Lenovo. They don’t buy PCs in retail stores. IIRC IBM ships IT infrastructure based on Win2000 to the upcoming Olympics. No Linux to be found.
Linux is strong on corporate servers but let’s admit it: It’s mostly at the expense of proprietary Unices like Tru64, HP-UX, etc.
I’m not implying that Linux is incapable of being a perfectly good desktop OS for the enterprise. It’s just that the IT departments are too conservative.
They’re too conservative (or not that daft) to change from 2000/XP to Vista.
Steve Jobs has said over and over again that he would like to remove all DRM from iTunes and other products it’s the Music and Film industry which force them and others to use DRM.
I use mac’s at home and windows at work, however i have to agree with the other posts in that i don’t think i would prefer apple to hold a monopoly, in fact i don’t want any of them including open source to have a monopoly. I don’t know many monopoly’s which are good for any one, i would settle for a rough three way split.
they need to work on power management for linux. seriously. i have never had a computer do a proper suspend/sleep mode ever until windows vista. and it’s kind of nice. saves power etc. i actually switched to ubuntu. Used ubuntu for about 2 or 3 years. and later on once i had played with vista switched from ubuntu to vista. Vista is not a bad os. i have absolutely no problems with it.
why did i leave ubuntu? i got tired of fiddling with things, and i wanted things to just work. i wanted nice graphics without the buggy beta compiz. i want well written drivers (ati. i’m lookin at you). i wanted a suspend that doesn’t crash the hard drive. yes this actually happened to me on ubuntu had to totally reinstall as it corrupted the hard drive. The problem is that ubuntu is still buggy. and that’s the problem i have with it. if you use the more stable version, you can’t easily get newer software.
I understand what you’re saying. I have stayed with Linux, but I have a hard time recommending it for others. It’s still very risky. My youngest son just tried to switch to Ubuntu. He was getting sick of some of the Vista issues (many newer games had serious issues with Vista), and also its massive memory requirements. The install went fine, but when we went to enable the 3D restricted driver for his ATI X700 card, it was a no go. The whole OS locked up. I booted to a rescue prompt and uninstalled the resricted ATI driver and tried the one from the ATI site. Same result, a locked-up OS. So if he wanted to use Ubuntu he was going to have to live with 2D video until I could figure it out. He said forget it and went back to Vista. He was going to use Crossover Games to play Steam games (like I do). It was such a bummer for me, but I don’t blame him. These are show-stopper bugs. Nothing some serious googling, manual kernel-compiling and some head-banging couldn’t solve, but most people don’t have that inclination. They are not tech masochists like I am!
That’s why having Linux computers pre-installed at the OEM is so important. People really need a good out-of-box experience. Windows can be even harder to install than Linux, but people rarely ever do it (I do). They never feel the pain of searching the net for motherboard chipset drivers, network drivers that work, etc, so they think Windows “just works”. Same with Macs, only more so since the hardware is so restricted by Apple. Actually, the amount of hardware that “just works” with a modern Linux distro is downright astounding. The kernel dudes have done absolutely heroic work against very difficult odds. They problem is that people are comparing it against pre-installed machines with Windows and Mac. The EEEPc also “just works” out-of-the box. Hopefully we will see more and more of this.
I do believe these stats show the snowball is _just starting_ to roll down the hill. I imagine the Linux percentage will grow significantly the next time due to all the UMPC’s coming out with Linux. Hopefully they won’t all get switched to XP/Vista before it really gets a chance to take off.
How about that?
Will someone care to publish data that windows server and .net are racing ahead of linux/bsd servers.
If people think going from 100 to 95% sales and that to be in only enterprise edition cause fall of empire, then they are living in fools paradise.
As the famous story goes, blind people can interpret Elephant as they feel.
Edited 2008-04-01 13:18 UTC
I tried vista, went back to XP, and now am using Server 2008 (trial) as a workstation. It seems clear to me based on my experiences at work (I administer and develop accounting software) that microsoft makes pretty good Server os’s (2003, 2008 so far) but they really need to just stop making client operating systems. They arn’t good at it.
While my pc is 3 years old, when that guy goes out and buys his quad core, and it feels slower on vista than his old XP box, microsoft has really screwed that experience up.
He should feel that the new operating system is equally as responsive with some goodies, given that his hardware horsepower has increased so dramatically.
This is what apple sells; at least in their advertisements. Users want the new toy without re-learning if it doesn’t add obvious value.
Unlike other posters, I don’t really have any disputes with how things are laid out in vista (networking, etc). I think overall its actually more logical. The problem with vista, even if you tune it etc, it that its just too much bloat and users want to continue to simplify their experience, not complicate it.
Myself I think I’m going to use either XP, 2008 server, or Vlite (A stripped down version) of vista until Windows 7 comes out. Microsoft is at least moving to a more modular solution.
Morglum
How do they calculate the statistics for Linux usage, if it’s mostly being downloaded for free?
That is a good point. I have computers all over the place, but none of them have been bought with Linux. So how would anyone know that they run Linux? Many times these surveys are for new PC sales, where traditionally Linux shows few sales except some servers and a few SLED and RHEL desktops. Maybe this will change with some of the UMPC sales. My next purchase will hopefully be either an EeePc or a Cloudbook with the 9-inch 1024×600 screens when they come out. I will definitely be buying it with Linux if it is still available. Otherwise I will have to may the Windows tax and replace it with Linux, like I have done for SO many years.
Yes, vary good point. I would like to know this too. I know more people using linux then osx. That may be because “birds of a feather” but i don’t think so. I find it hard to believe that only 0.6% of the people are smart
.
Exactly! Most every “consumer” survey is a “market” survey, and GNU/Linux is neither marketed nor sold*, so I would put the percentage of GNU/Linux users at 2-3 times that. Otherwise, why would Ballmer and Gates freak out so over the top every time you say the word Linux?
_______________
*With exception to RHEL, SUSE, and distros I don’t ever see even Linux geeks using.
Edited 2008-04-01 23:49 UTC
As much, as I like other OS’s like Linux,FreeBSD and OSX. windows is not going anywhere anytime soon.
Thats just a fact;
sure, more consumers and students etc will buy and uses macs some will venture to Nix and OSS like Linux.
but the simple fact the windows will stay 90% or greater for the forseeable future, is truth.
I see Vista as Microsofts OSX 10.0, there alot of good stuff they did under the hood. maybe not as polished as it should be but most where good solid ideas. and the new driver framework is very good idea. but some of these things take a preformance hit. thats just the way it is. you cant say, hey “we want a more secure more stable OS”
then when they make some basic changes to give you that you complain.
and as far as the backend, goes, sharepoint is actualy pretty nice. to bad there is no OSS version of it. and no a wiki does not count.
-Nex6
Again US centric discussion, as if there was no world outside. Those numbers refer to US. It is quite a different story pretty much everywhere else.
Yea, as the report is US-based as are 90%+ or the users of this board..that is logical.
So instead of just bitching and moaning, provide some input:
What countries? What kind of penetration does MS have in the enterprise? What is the increase/decrease over the last few years? Who is increasing shares and by how much? Source of your information?
90%+ of users on this board are US – based ?
Get your head out of your ass son
Edited 2008-04-01 18:30 UTC
With regards to Germany, large deployments are:
police, flight control, employment office, whole municipals like metropolitan Munich (as the most prominent example).
You’ll find in examples in other European countries like France or in Scandinavia.
The picture of stagnation painted is far from reality on a world-wide scale.
Also you can’t overlook the increasing OEM support, like Asus, Dell and now Shuttle (kPC).
Also Apple market share is below half that of the US in almost any other country, miniscule even in many.
You can’t just ignore that in this discussion or come to false conclusions for future outlook.