[TriLUG] Re: [GoLugTech] interesting server stats

[Bill Weisgerber]

It's easy to get confused with all the statistics being compared relevant to themselves.  The market stats situation is further confused with different measures being made such as dollar volume and unit volume.  The historic server market with the big bucks is still dominated by IBM and to a lesser degree conventional RISC based unix and Windows-based servers, but unit volumes for IBM and RISC are low compared to linux on Intel.  Dollar volume is split roughly evenly between mainframe, unix/linux, and Windows servers.  Linux servers have a high volume compared to conventional unix and the highest unit volume today is Windows on Intel.

All that is kind of meaningless, though.  You have to look at some particular segment of the business to see just what is dominant and these segments really do not compete with one another.  It doesn't matter to small business data base server buyers, who mostly use Windows servers, what the market share is for web servers, where linux is the new king.  Most of the interesting action is in new business, too, since companies that have an investment in one technology or another tend to just add to that when they need more or need to replace an old system.  So even Netware keeps most of its overall share from year to year since most of the market is not coming from brand new installations.

What would be more useful is information as to what new customers are choosing, since this would really tell what is going on in the markets.  That information is usually not available for free and analyist companies sell the information and make companies agree to not reveal the answers.  Years ago, Windows was getting the lion's share of the new business and it showed over time.  Today, I don't have any access anymore to the detailed studies, since I went back into engineering.  >From the gross numbers, which show linux growing substantially year to year, I would say that linux must be getting a lot of the new business or else is really hurting some traditional business that Sun and the others have had to themselves.  I expect that it is some of both.

Windows seems to have slowed down considerably in terms of share growth although it, too, is growing year over year meaning that it is getting some of the new business, but not like the old days.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Marc M 
  To: GoLUG's Technical list ; Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list 
  Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2005 9:03 AM
  Subject: [GoLugTech] interesting server stats



  I understand that Linux is suppossed to be at about 30% of the overall server market within the next few years (correct me if I'm wrong on this).   Looks like HP still has quite a stronghold for organizations that really just want to spend a lot of cash.  On the other hand it looks like Linux is crushing Solaris in the x86 space.   
       http://h10038.www1.hp.com/content_detail.asp?contentid=362&agencyid=1&jumpid=ex_R33_go/thinkagain_LOB|FED






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