Apache's lead over Microsoft's IIS goes poof

(Credit: Netcraft)

Technology writer Glyn Moody notes that open-source software developer Apache's lead in Web servers over Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) is at its skinniest ever: 10 percent.

Apache continues to gain (1 million sites last month). But Microsoft's IIS is also growing--and at a faster clip (3 million sites last month). As Glyn suggests, it may not matter: Apache's job may well be done in proving the viability of open-source projects and paving the way for many more.

I doubt, regardless, whether Microsoft is resting on its laurels. If you click through to the Netcraft page, you'll see Google growing at a torrid pace in the last graph. So maybe open source wins, after all, given Google's reliance on open source.

[qwerty75]

There is more to the story

MS has a history of fudging its numbers.

How many of the IIS server are nothing more then the simple servers at crappy hosts like Go Daddy?

How many are hosting parked domains.

For high end, mission critical web servers, I don't think MS's weak offerings are making much of a dent.

[qwerty75]

There is more to the story

MS has a history of fudging its numbers.

How many of the IIS server are nothing more then the simple servers at crappy hosts like Go Daddy?

How many are hosting parked domains.

For high end, mission critical web servers, I don't think MS's weak offerings are making much of a dent.

[ian.waring]

Market share is buyable

Netcraft's headline numbers tend to get skewed by relatively few domain parking and volume hosting sites. Traditional, Apache land due to it's zero cost, vs IIS where you tend to have to pay MS per instance. I can't imagine any other reason for those folks to move over to IIS other than there being financial incentives (not just zero cost) to do so.

When one company I used to work for subscribed to various Netcraft reports, we used to pay for an analogue of their survey taking out the effect of netblocks containing >100 hosts. I seem to recall that the Apache market share was just as resilient there as the headline "all hosts" as reported, but I haven't seen that graph in five years. Mike Prettejohn at Netcraft (mhp at netcraft dot com) may still run this regularly.

The other survey we used to subscribe to was their SSL survey (hosts with SSL certificates in place), which was an analogue for "trading e-commerce sites". Even 5 years ago, this was 50:50 between Apache and IIS... so it looked like Microsoft were successfully landing new e-commerce sites out of proportion to their overall market share at the time. For various reasons (not least to see the number of attempts cracking my personal Linux server every night, most of which try attacks which CERT characterises as Windows server exploits), this leaves me cold.

Ian W.

[ian.waring]

Market share is buyable

Netcraft's headline numbers tend to get skewed by relatively few domain parking and volume hosting sites. Traditional, Apache land due to it's zero cost, vs IIS where you tend to have to pay MS per instance. I can't imagine any other reason for those folks to move over to IIS other than there being financial incentives (not just zero cost) to do so.

When one company I used to work for subscribed to various Netcraft reports, we used to pay for an analogue of their survey taking out the effect of netblocks containing >100 hosts. I seem to recall that the Apache market share was just as resilient there as the headline "all hosts" as reported, but I haven't seen that graph in five years. Mike Prettejohn at Netcraft (mhp at netcraft dot com) may still run this regularly.

The other survey we used to subscribe to was their SSL survey (hosts with SSL certificates in place), which was an analogue for "trading e-commerce sites". Even 5 years ago, this was 50:50 between Apache and IIS... so it looked like Microsoft were successfully landing new e-commerce sites out of proportion to their overall market share at the time. For various reasons (not least to see the number of attempts cracking my personal Linux server every night, most of which try attacks which CERT characterises as Windows server exploits), this leaves me cold.

Ian W.

[oyunlarr]

Netcraft's headline numbers tend to get skewed by relatively few domain parking and volume hosting sites. Traditional, Apache land due to it's zero cost, vs IIS where you tend to have to pay MS per instance. I can't imagine any other reason for those folks to move over to IIS other than there being financial incentives (not just zero cost) to do so.

kiz oyunlari

[oyunlarr]

Netcraft's headline numbers tend to get skewed by relatively few domain parking and volume hosting sites. Traditional, Apache land due to it's zero cost, vs IIS where you tend to have to pay MS per instance. I can't imagine any other reason for those folks to move over to IIS other than there being financial incentives (not just zero cost) to do so. When one company I used to work for subscribed to various Netcraft reports, we used to pay for an analogue of their survey taking out the effect of netblocks containing >100 hosts. I seem to recall that the Apache market share was just as resilient there as the headline "all hosts" as reported, but I haven't seen that graph in five years. Mike Prettejohn at Netcraft (mhp at netcraft dot com) may still run this regularly. The other survey we used to subscribe to was their SSL survey (hosts with SSL certificates in place), which was an analogue for "trading e-commerce sites". Even 5 years ago, this was 50:50 between Apache and IIS... so it looked like Microsoft were successfully landing new e-commerce sites out of proportion to their overall market share at the time. For various reasons (not least to see the number of attempts cracking my personal Linux server every night, most of which try attacks which CERT characterises as Windows server exploits), this leaves me cold. Ian W. oyun