RSSMicrosoft Gains in Web Server Market
By Ed Oswald | Published June 8, 2006, 2:53 PM
Microsoft said Thursday that third-party data indicates the Windows server platform continues to grow at the expense of Apache and Linux. According to Web hosting research company Netcraft, Windows hostnames grew by 4.5 million, while Apache/Linux lost 429,000.
Percentage-wise, that equals a 29.7 percent market share for Windows, and a gain of 4.25 percent for the month. Meanwhile, Apache/Linux fell 3.5 percent to 61.25 percent in May. Furthermore, Web sites based on Windows Server 2003 have seen a 176 percent growth since April of last year, according to Microsoft research.
John Zanni, Microsoft's director of shared hosting market development, told BetaNews in an interview that the gains could be attributed to several factors. First off, the company is offering versions of both SQL Server and Visual Studio for free.
Second, Microsoft is making improvements to its core server products, which in turn is making the company's software more attractive as a Web platform. "We're working with providers to create richer offerings," he said.
Zanni says the success can also be attributed to a change in Microsoft's business strategy. Nearly a decade after ASP first hit the market, the concept of software as a service is finally catching on with Web developers.
"People are looking for richer functionality than in the past," he says, explaining that is one of Microsoft's strengths. Thus it has resulted in a migration by some developers to the Redmond company's technologies, and also is shown in the 46 percent increase in ASP.NET sites since July of last year.
Also, Microsoft's sheer size assists it in being more mobile than Linux in addressing customer needs. Zanni said the company has its entire product line at its disposal, which allows it to look for new ways for products to work within the software as a service model, giving it an advantage.
When asked what the company's goals were for share of the market, Zanni responded that increased market share was not necessarily the target of Microsoft's moves in the space. "Our goal is to enable people to be successful using software as a service," he added. "Our rising share shows that."
This is mostly due to big hosting companies like Go Daddy that decided to start a migration campaign of their parked domains last month.
According to Netcraft, that migration represents 1.6M hostnames, almost 1/4 of the global MS growth of the month (4.5M).
I think all of this doesn't mean as much as microsoft would like us to believe.
It must be noted that Apache domination over IIS is still very large, and that among the 10 most reliable hosting companies, 5 are using Linux, 4 FreeBSD, and only one Windows Server 2003.
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|I find it amazing that you discount hostnames when they are on the Microsoft platform but you are more than happy to count them when they are on other platforms. Sounds a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.
If you remove all the sites that are just static html pages together with the host name from both sides I think you would find that the Microsoft market share is even higher
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|What must be discounted is the fact that millions of parked domains can very well sit on a very small number of physical servers, and they don't even host meaningful contents, as opposed to 'normal' static sites.
I think you should provide figures and/or links to back up your assertion.
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|I'm just wondering how much the numbers of servers of each type changed. I see the article mentioning "hostnames" and "sites based on WS2003"; but how many actual servers does this translate to?
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|Competition is great. Look like MS finally wake up. Expecting more quality products coming out from MS and other companies.
Minority report type of technologies could be possible in the short futures.
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|That's because Linux Sux. This is proof, its not just me, for those anxious to slam my Linux comments, evidently the ENTIRE market understands Linux is a TOY not a real enterprise TOOL.
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|....not that netcraft is the *least* bit biased.
8grin*
According to Netcraft, flaimbait comments form rijp have risen a whopping 26.4 percent in the last year.
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|Calling Linux a toy is rather naive, these figures show a Ms gain, and can be attributed to the growing success of server 2003 which is now regarded as an OS to relied upon. This further benefits them to the various ASP,.NET,SQL and professions able to configure and use it. MS offers extensive Knowledge base and tools like WSUS to keep it all running.
I like Microsoft, i hope they continue to make it more powerful, stable and more desireable to industry. The fact that they have such good competition is the number one reason server 2003 is so good.
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|Naive? Linux is open source, I am not the one that is tossing it aside. Its not accepted by gamers, developers, or even serious Application companies
Do you see any large scale applications being written for Linux? NO!
So therefore, T-O-Y. I am not naive, you are blind.
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|netcraft? Que es esto?
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|Wrong, its because to run a Linux server you need someone who understands computers and networking, and these people get paid real money
Any idiot can point and click a Windows server into operation, so you can hire a lower paid and lesser skilled admin.
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|He's right, compared to other offerings out there (BSD, Solaris, various proprietary Unixes, and even Windows as much as I hate to say it), Linux just can't compete when it comes to speed and stability. Well, it can compete in the speed department with windows, but not stability. Too bad there are so many Linux fan boys pushing it so hard that people don't realize how important Unix still is.
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|Well, theres Oracle, guess that makes one, but it still runs faster on BSD under binary compatibility. Guess you could also count Apache as number two, both software designed with Linux in mind, but run better on Unix.
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|right ... So the easier you make it, the inferiour it gets. Guess mac users are Poons then.
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|So sorry .. I was under the impression this topic was headed "Microsoft Gains in Web Server Market", and didnt know that real OS's had games n such. Guess that makes UNIX mainframes one big playroom. Must have missed that Unix section at ToysRus.
I stand corrected, you are not naive, your just a POON!
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|I agree that Red Har Enterprise, is not a TOY.
However, there is a good point made regarding the place which Linux exists in the market of business application development is rather narrow. It's not that Linux is a TOY. IT is that Linux is not being utilized to it's fullest extent in the USA market. Much of the rest of the world Europe, Asia, Africa, China, Japan, etc... all use Unix as the primary platform for business and many home computers even.
This has been the case for decades.
The US market is rather small compared to the entire world of computer users.
It is unfortunate that unix and linux have been overlooked so long in the US due to their complexity and lack of univormity of standards between the flavors available. This makes picking which OS and what software you run on the OS infinitely more difficult for Business owners.
So the US Business owners make the usual decision, to let their vendor Microsoft, make all their decisions for them. :D
Who's really the naive one? I bet it's the US business owners.
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