Low prices, Windows capture server market

Microsoft Windows captured the lead for the first time in server operating systems during the third quarter, boosted by continued demand for inexpensive servers selling for less than $25,000, according to a new report.

Inexpensive, or volume, servers continued to drive the worldwide server market in the third quarter, which grew 8.1 percent in the past year, to $12.5 billion, IDC said in a global server market report released Wednesday. The quarter was marked by the continued shift to inexpensive servers, which are often clustered together for greater horsepower and flexibility, at the expense of the pricier enterprise servers, which posted a decline in third-quarter revenues, IDC said.

Sales of volume servers costing less than $25,000 grew nearly 15 percent since last year. And midrange servers, for the fourth consecutive quarter, took market share away from enterprise servers by climbing nearly 4 percent. Enterprise servers, which sell for more than $500,000, declined 1.2 percent.

Sales of servers running Windows jumped nearly 18 percent, to $4.6 billion in the quarter. For the first time, Microsoft can say it makes the most popular server operating system, according to the report. IDC attributed Windows' adoption growth to customers increasingly deploying the operating system "in support of scalable work loads and consolidation projects."

And while revenues from Linux server sales rose a substantial 34 percent in the quarter, that was less than the growth rate in that category during the previous quarter, according to IDC. Unix revenues, which accounted for nearly 32 percent of the overall server market, fell roughly half a percent in the quarter, to $3.9 billion.

Among the hardware vendors, IBM retained its lead, with 32 percent of the server market, based on revenues. Hewlett-Packard accounted for nearly 28 percent of the market, followed by Dell with 10.5 percent and Sun Microsystems with 8.7 percent. Sun, which has struggled to regain its position as a significant player in the server market, fell to the No. 4 spot in the quarter after going head-to-head with Dell for several quarters for the No. 3 ranking.

[FutureGuy]

just low prices???

Windows didn't capture the server market because of low prices alone. If price was the only issue, Linux is essentially free!!

[TanNg]

Yeah

The reporter know it, but he hate MS.

[mortis9]

linux isn't free

no company spends $25,000 on a server only to download a copy of linux off of bittorrent and not pay for support. don't be blinded by your hate for microsoft.

[Maccess]

Twisted statistics

Yes, Windows is number one for bundled server OSs.

But that's because most servers are sold without operating systems!

Any competent systems administrator can download the install image for Linux, Solaris, or BSD and install it himself. Hence, no hardware vendor need bundle these free operating systems with their computers.

Those buying bundled Windows, do so because it is cheaper to do so than buying Windows as an aftermarket add-on.

A corollary to that would be that only those servers sold with Windows are used with Windows, while those sold without operating systems are used with some flavor of OpenSource server software.

So, take those figures with a grain of salt.

If you want to know the real figures, compare the number of servers sold with Windows to the total number of servers sold without operating systems plus the total number of server boards used by system builders for servers.

[batpox]

Where did you get your 'statistic'

You say: "most servers are sold without operating systems".

That disagrees with my experience. It *is* rather 'twisted' to make rash statements without facts. So show me I'm wrong and post your source.

[FutureGuy]

BS...

There is nothing in these stats that states that they are considering only bundled server, otherwise they would have had a seperate "non bundled servers" category. These stats were as much about hardware as it is about OS so it couldn't just ignore a few billion dollars worth of "non bundled servers". Go home and take rest.

[kensystem]

Preciely

Precisely

They're statistics are accurate for units sold. Yet they 'cleverly' they mislead people (a poll of laymen readers will confirm this) in two ways:

-They only count number of items sold, not in use. The word 'market' leads many people to believe 'units in use', even though it OBVIOUSLY (with a little extra thought for some people) doesnt count the number of servers with free OSs installed.

-They 'cleverly' (well, its only clever to shallow thinkers) *groups* all Windows servers sold, and dont include statistics on the sum of all the UNIX group sold (NOT even including the free ones). This is akin to a car company (say, G.M.) saying that it sold more units than any other company, but using it imply that there are more GM cars on the road, by also saying "units sold of our competitors decreased", WITHOUT mentioning that :

a) the number of car companies has increased (as has the number of vendors & brands of Unix variants)
b) the total number of those *similar* (UNIX) OS's has actually risen.

Fortunately, most of the technology steerers see through these accurate -- bu misleading (unbalanced comparison/stats) "news" stories. But a layman or glacing reader will DEFINATELY take this article to mean that there are now more windows servers out there.

[dfragnito]

Please!!!!

"For the first time, Microsoft can say it makes the most popular server operating system"

Microsoft does not dare run with this.

[robertcampbell2]

You are so right

We buy IBM hardware with Windows 2003. It's simply a better NOS.