In reporting its second-quarter financial results Thursday, Microsoft said revenue at its Server and Tools division, which caters to business customers, grew 18 percent, year over year. Licenses sales of Windows server, which competes head-to-head with open-source software Linux and other server operating systems, grew 17 percent, year over year.Despite the threat posed by open-source products, Microsoft server software sales have been growing at double-digit rates for several quarters, C|Net reports.
Elsewhere, the Free Software Foundation is lobbying the European government to reject the server license that Microsoft has proposed following the European Commission’s antitrust ruling.
Hehe, I guess it’s good since I actually get more work done and make my way up the corporate food chain faster.
I believe most discerning power users who choose Windows on the desktop do because of an app or two (or three) that they can’t get anywhere else. But why servers? What’s the big draw? I can keep a Windows desktop secure simply because there’s not a lot of people (other than stupid worms and such) gunning for it, but I couldn’t imagine what it would be like on a server where I had people targeting my specific box.
Why not? Windows Server 2003 has proven to be very reliable, fast and yes, secure. It’s actually an equally good choice.
Jon wrote…
“Why not? Windows Server 2003 has proven to be very reliable, fast and yes, secure. It’s actually an equally good choice.”
Can you provide proof to back up your statement?
I’m not impressed. And I don’t even know if they have any hidden numbers, too. 🙂
With the security concerns people don’t have much choice. They should upgrade their Windows, generating money for Microsoft, or switch to Linux, which is harder to do.
>Can you provide proof to back up your statement?
I have first hand experience in the server room. I work with Win2k3 almost daily (half our servers are Solaris-sparc boxes).
Supposedly windows 2003 is a great server OS. I believe you can run it without the GUI and it apparently has a sensible initial configuration with most services turned off by default. Can anybody elaborate on this? I’m mainly a unix guy so i don’t have any experience with win2003.
The question is, “how much faster would growth be if Linux wasn’t in the picture?”
18% growth is great! But that growth might have been a lot higher if MS didn’t have to compete with Linux.
“Can you provide proof to back up your statement?”
Well, take IIS 6.0 for exaple. AFAIK, there was none (or maybe one) security updates for it. And yeah, it’s faster than Apache since they moved some parts into Windows kernel. Reliability was never issue, not even with IIS 5.
For exaple, take a look at this comparsion of IIS 6 and Apache, done by ServerWatch.com
http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/3074841
IIS 6 clearly wins in every category.
Supposedly windows 2003 is a great server OS. I believe you can run it without the GUI and it apparently has a sensible initial configuration with most services turned off by default. Can anybody elaborate on this? I’m mainly a unix guy so i don’t have any experience with win2003.
Can’t turn off the GUI, but they did go a long way to make sure that it is more secure by default – unneeded services are turned off as you said. And they have added more levels of “administrator” than before, so they’re providing better role based security.
-G
by counting some portion of Windows 2000 and Windows XP desktops as “servers”, now that they are more general-purpose than Win 9x were.
IIS 6 clearly wins in every category.
Have you read it? IIS 6 doesn’t “clearly win” at all. The only places it showed weakness and downright no support was with Microsoft specific features. Everything else could be added in via modules. In the end the article didn’t state, “IIS 6 blows apache away.” It said it was based on your needs.
Stop trolling.
In my opinion, from working in a shop that glorifies MS.
Yes it Really is good!!!
But not worth the tremendous EXPENSE!
I am a Linux guy working in a MS world. It reminds me of days back when I was trying to sell long distance to businesses. I would get the head Honcho on the phone and he would go over the phone bill and admit the amount spent. I would quote him the savings from using the same exact lines, just a different provider, and show him the monthly savings and yearly savings. Most the time 5 digits over a year. But in the end, they just not switch, and they were loosing tons of $$$.
Most MS shops are the same way, Scared, Afraid, not willing to change. They listen, but do not hear. All that licensing on top of licensing year after year. I could see if the product was significantly better and had a significant tech support difference.
But they do not. The open source community has much better support then the pay support from the MS experts who charge for them trying to justify why is never is their fault.
Just my opinion… Have a nice day.
…or switch to Linux, which is harder to do.
Actually, switching to Linux isn’t harder. It’s not even hard. Linux is getting very easy.
Open Source is not supposed to be judged on how much money it racked in this quarter, but how it solved the problems of this quarter and saved money in the process.
So you work with windows 2003 in a job scenario, can you give some real logical arguements on why its secure. Obviously Windows 2003, or any software for that matter is not 100% secure.
I work with Windows 2k, 2k3 and Solaris servers daily.
2003, although evolutionary, is a fine internal server choice. Many of our intranet applications our hosted on 2003; support through RDP is nice and simple.
Specific to web server discussions in this thread, IIS 5 should really be avoided if possible due to its architecture. IIS 6 improves quite a bit, but regardless of the literature, independent sites and worker processes can still collide with each other, so I don’t personally see the same stability and reliability as Apache.
But in general with this article, please remember: industry wide growth could be in fact 20%, so 18% growth could be a position loss. Spin it however you want.
This is from New computer users and old legacy unix.
Linux is still growing faster, but gets it’s users from the same place microsoft does.
I guess it shows that some people would rather pay for Windows rather than get Linux for free.
Linux wins as a server because it is an implementation of UNIX that uses open standards and plays nicely with others, even Microsoft boxes. Microsoft tries as hard as they can not to play nicely with others, and because of their lock-in strategy, I really can’t see why anyone would want to use their products in the server room.
This is besides the fact that Windows just has fundamental disadvantages as a server OS that UNIX does not (despite the fact that Microsoft keeps trying to plug the holes and patch up Windows to try and make it work right).
Well in our company we still using windows 2003 hem… server.
An administrator has tried to install fedora3 to use it as a file server (samba). The problem is that he wants to use linux with one-sign logon through Active Directory. Should I say that it was the first time he installed Linux. He succeed!!! But finally decided to stay with windows. Why? Because it’s safe to him. If you buy Windows and something goes wrong you always can clame Microsoft for it. If you made a decision to install Linux – it’s yours responsability now.
Linux wins as a server because it is an implementation of UNIX that uses open standards and plays nicely with others, even Microsoft boxes. Microsoft tries as hard as they can not to play nicely with others, and because of their lock-in strategy, I really can’t see why anyone would want to use their products in the server room.
And Microsoft is winning no matter how much you hate it. Look at the numbers. Business doesn’t really care what the FOSS crowd thinks.
Hi all,
does anyone know, how they got to these numbers?
I mean, how would you calculate the growth of Linux/FreeBSD in comparisson? I think it’s impossible! Because most Linux Distros are freely available on the net. Who knows how many people are using those on their servers?
I’m working for an Internet hosting company, and we are having thousands of Linux/FreeBSD servers. Most of them in Europe though.
We started introducing Windows Server 2003 about 6 months ago. We are getting about 85% orders for Linux, 10% for FreeBSD and only 5% for Windows worldwide.
Especially on the OSS world there are so many hidden numbers. I can only say, from my own experience, Windows as server OS is rather exotic, if it comes to dedicated servers.
There might be businesses where this is different. But then I’m happy, I don’t have to work with Windows too much. 🙂
Since the introduction of Windows Server 2003, we are having a little bit less than 3% of Windows installed servers here in the US. Every customer here can choose between whatever he likes, at any time.
So, what would MS do? Add those 3% of our servers to their calculation? They probably would, because all of them are licensed, and taken into account.
If it comes to MS, the other 97% servers here, won’t even exist most likely.
What do you think? How much value do MS numbers really have? I think it’s just simple marketing, and as long as no-one can prove otherwise, people are gonna swallow it without asking questions.
Supposedly windows 2003 is a great server OS. I believe you can run it without the GUI….
LOL! Windows 2003 is a half-decent departmental server, but as a serious remote server, particularly one for internet usage, it’s a bit of a joke. And don’t make me laugh about the command-line stuff. Remote adminning Windows 2003 with SAC is somewhat less than a joke and it’s an absolte pain. Basically, it was hacked on as a response to the things Unix and Linux admins are able to do with SSH and their shell systems (i.e. manage everything!). No, you can’t do anything with Windows 2003 without the GUI. It’s designed around it.
Subtle things always change or don’t work in the same way between patches and Service Packs either. Installing third-party software is infinately more reliable and predictable on a Linux/Unix system.
With things like IP Filters, IPSec and the networking tools (don’t always work, don’t always survive without a reboot) it tries very, very hard to have the level of technical refinement Unix and Linux systems have long enjoyed and it really, really wants to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, it can’t be taken seriously yet, but if it is in several years time Microsoft will have went around the block several times and come up with something that looks exactly like a Unix-like system.
If you want to be taken seriously in the x86 server world, especially for internet usage, you simply buy yourself a Linux box and have done with it. Some of the stuff that just works coming from a Linux and/or Unix world means that there’s just no point in it. “Windows will get better as a server OS” just doesn’t cut it for me, because it is simply a much more expensive pretender even excluding the licenses for SQL Server, Exchange et al.
The main reason why business buy windows servers is to run Windows applications, can anyone point me to an open source software which supplies JDE Edwards/Hyperion functionality and something that can compare to Citrix????
I’m sorry, Linux is ok if you have to develop an app from scratch, but it is not good to buy software on the market and install it on your server.
Business do not like to depend on individuals, they want to depend on suppliers, is as easy as that.
You people can choose to believe the facts or not.
Win2k3 is as insecure as any previous version of windows, no matter what the default settins are. In my personal experience it gives much more trouble than Win2k and offers not too many reasons to upgrade, in fact Win2k is still the King of the hill.
And by the way, I’m not an MS zealot.
And Microsoft is winning no matter how much you hate it. Look at the numbers. Business doesn’t really care what the FOSS crowd thinks.
I’m afraid those numbers don’t mean anything. Would you care to explain to everyone why Microsoft and their analysts insist on quoting their growth and market share as a percentage of revenue? If you look at how those figures are compiled you would also realise that anything and everything is counted as a Windows server sale and added to the revenue. Ho, hum. If you ask yourself about actual server installations, or maybe even even the many thousands of free Linux/BSD installations the picture becomes rather different. Microsoft wants to give everyone the impression that they don’t exist (hence portraying things in this way) and that businesses don’t depend on them, but unfortunately for Microsoft, they do.
The constant insistence on hammering away at Windows Server’s market share by revenue is very, very telling. And they tell us Windows costs less and has a lower TCO. Now, there’s a contradiction in terms!
“Win2k3 is as insecure as any previous version of windows, no matter what the default settins are.”
Nope. It is MORE secure. Just compare IIS 5 and 6 security record.
“In my personal experience it gives much more trouble than Win2k and offers not too many reasons to upgrade,”
No way. Have you ever used AD under Win 2K and 2K3???
Don’t get me wrong. but I believe you haven’t worked with Win 2003.
…something that can compare to Citrix????
You’re running Citrix? My God, I sympathise (thin clients should save you money, you know?
). If you don’t know any alternatives then you’re so tied to Citrix you wouldn’t use any alternatives even if they were handed to you on a plate.
I’m sorry, Linux is ok if you have to develop an app from scratch…
I’ve never had to, and neither have thousands upon thousands of others.
Business do not like to depend on individuals, they want to depend on suppliers, is as easy as that.
Linux is all about suppliers these days, so I really don’t know where you’ve been.
That’s exactly the point: business don’t like to depend on individuals. They use windows because they think that you can be easily replaced, or that they will not need a qualified admin.
They are wrong, and usually realize it sooner or later, when they get a virus, or they get hacked, or things just stop working. At that point they call me, and I have to spend a lot of time in a server room at 10C, just because there is no way to solve things properly remotely on windows. They admit that the debian boxes have been running for 3 years without any glitches at all, but still want to have some windows servers, but with “improved” security & antiviruses! I really don’t understand, especially if you look at the cost of the Microsoft software stack. Active Directory is nice though …
I’m afraid those numbers don’t mean anything.
People want to use windows servers. It’s ok if you can’t handle it. I know it’s hard for some people in alternative FOSS realities to understand that.
uhm i work with w2k3 on a daily basis as well and iis 6 and win2k3 is NOT what you make it sound to be, is it more secure? yes, is it better then win2k? yes. BUT that serverwatch article is a lot of bullsh*t.. one table shows COMMAND LINE ADMINISTRATION for iis 6 as YES and limited for apache? are you f*cking kidding me? a lot of this windows is better is just opinion and to be quite honest i would still not put a win2k3 server without a proper reverse proxy in front of it directly to the ‘net. Oh and there is always the cost thing. IIS 6 comes ONLY with win2k3, you cant install it on win2k, meaning you HAVE to upgrade your entire system. so people have to shell out AGAIN a lot of money sine a win2k3 license doesnt come cheap.
Here is the best part though iis 6 is very nice running ASP and .net etc. but win2k3 is also MUCH more resource hungry then apache.
One last ranting, if win2k3 is the greatest thing since sliced bread why is apache STILL holding as the most common webserver choice?..http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html while apache grows slowly, iis goes down slowly.
but of course its just my imagination…
Actually, it does run in headless mode.
> The main reason why business buy windows servers is to run
> Windows applications, can anyone point me to an open source
> software which supplies JDE Edwards/Hyperion functionality
> and something that can compare to Citrix????
Isn’t citrix just a bloated terminal service? I had to work with that 5 or 6 years ago, and maybe it turned into something else during the last years. But I can see, why there is no OSS alternative. But you are right, you probabl won’t find Citrix in the Linux world ever.
Hmm – I wonder why that textbox is labelled ‘Subject’. Anybody care to place a bet?
People want to use windows servers. It’s ok if you can’t handle it. I know it’s hard for some people in alternative FOSS realities to understand that.
I’m afraid you simply haven’t responded to how I pointed out why those figures don’t mean anything. The above is simply a non-existant response. The usual “I’m not religious”, “FOSS people can’t take it”, “I use software as a tool” (got to like that one) comments simply aren’t going to help you.
I’m sorry that you’ve based your reasoning on non-existant figures, but there it is.
to appease customers and to attract clients.
especially clients from emerging markets like india where windows seems to be growing strong. microsoft has done a great job there. however, java is also strong there. Java + Windows is a big seller.
Zealots can insult Microsoft all they want, but Windows 2003 Server has proven to be exceptional. Windows 2003 is extremely stable, easy to use, powerful, and secure. Why would someone choose to deploy it over Linux? Well, there are just certain areas where Linux just can’t compare to Windows (vice versa is true too.)
Here are some reasons why people would choose Windows over Linux.
1) Unique, mission-critical systems – Microsoft supports their OS for 7 years. The average “free as in beer” Linux distribution runs for 2 years. People aren’t stupid enough to have to migrate and face all those headaches every two years. Red Hat Linux supports Linux for 7 years too, but they end up costing more than Windows.
Ex. Windows 2000 Enterprise Edition running Oracle for 7 years versus RedHat Linux Enterprise running Oracle for that long.
2) Centralized Management – SMS Server/Active Directory provide centralized installation/management/everything else that Linux just can’t touch. We can deploy Novell products, but that would prove to be more expensive and not as well integrated.
3) Tons more reasons, but don’t wanna bother.
>>Actually, switching to Linux isn’t harder. It’s not even hard. Linux is getting very easy.
Which is why http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/01/25/HNibmsilent_1.html“>IB…
It’s ok if those numbers don’t mean anything to you David. I’m sure others will be able to comprehend them.
From what I’ve written, and assuming they can read, I’m sure they will
.
From the feeble “Oh, I’m sorry you don’t comprehend those figures” responses I can take it as read that you have nothing? No change there then. I suppose it’s best if you don’t try and provide a balanced and reasoned response to what’s actually been written (if only) as you’ll only end up being taken apart – yet again.
I like it, although i don’t like the vendor-lock-in. I administer a rack full of W2003 Servers running as a terminal server farm with Tarantella. It’s a real pleasure to use it cause I can concentrate on the thing that I think is most important : Keeping my customers satisfied – I also use FOSS for things like a trouble-ticket system (BugZilla) and for revision control of my config-scripts (svn).
I think you can go to bed with Microsoft if you know, where the dangers lie. In my case we have a three-year-contract with our customers and the license costs for W2003 Server only make up about 20% of the hardware costs – that’s ok.
I think W2003 and a bunch of FOSS-tools make a great combination – and I don’t care if people like RMS don’t want FOSS apps to be ported to windows (because it may prevent people from moving completely to FOSS).
Finally it all depends on the project, on the environment and the knowledge you have – you can also go down the drain with FOSS if you don’t have any expirience with it …
one table shows COMMAND LINE ADMINISTRATION for iis 6 as YES and limited for apache?
Have you ever looked at command line tools available for IIS? Usually people don’t even know that those exist. Have you ever looked at IIS Resource toolkit? Metabse for IIS?
“I’m afraid those numbers don’t mean anything.”
How about these numbers:
The server and tools unit saw sales jump to $2.43 billion from $2.15 billion, with operating income at $913 million
“If you ask yourself about actual server installations, or maybe even even the many thousands of free Linux/BSD installations”
We know, David, if Microsoft were giving Windows 2003 server for free, there would be much more installations of Win2K3. As for sales, they would stay the same or even drop. Same for profits.
I do not know, David, but I would rather be a small apple with the miniscule market share and healthy profits, than some loser who gives away his stuff for free because nobody wants to pay even penny for it.
“The constant insistence on hammering away at Windows Server’s market share by revenue is very, very telling. And they tell us Windows costs less and has a lower TCO. Now, there’s a contradiction in terms!”
Please choose one out of two: either you’ve based your reasoning on non-existant figures because those numbers don’t mean anything and Microsoft is a financial loser and a corproate failure and evil, or these numbers mean something and Microsoft is evil profitable corporation selling software that costs more and has higher TCO.
I know you hate Microsoft, but this time you can’t have it both ways.
Apparently, numbers mean something if you are trying to discredit them so hard.:)
What I think alot of people fail to take into accoount are these factors;
1) NT4 support has finished and Windows 2000 will be getting to its EOL very soon; most don’t want to end up like the NT4 hold outs, and result in a mad dash to the finish line, so they’ve decided to upgrade now before it is too late.
2) Windows 2003, no matter how much the nay sayers would like the world to believe, is actually a pretty good product, and with Microsoft making Services for UNIX free, it is a pretty compelling option for those, not only interested in a Windows solution, but for those who require a Windows AND UNIX application; Services for UNIX allow that user to run both.
3) The new pricing policy has not only allowed flexibility in regards to the rolls people can employ Windows 2003 – aka, there is now a “Web Server” version of Windows 2003, for example, but also the fact that when many of them upgrade, they have to purchase a whole new copy; for some, the finely tweaked line is great, because they don’t have to purchase software with features they’re not going to use, but on the other hand, for the organisation, who may elevate their server from just doing web serving, to becoming a file server and domain controller, it could be quite costly.
4) New Windows 2003 software is finally coming on tap; when Windows 2003 came out, Microsoft gave its operating system a major overhaul, many applications either failed to run, or ran very unreliably due to the necessary changes. Now that the new applications are, organisations have tested them, these organisations are now comfortable with upgrading their “mission critical” server.
5) Growth numbers can be very subjective; if I go from one customer to two customers, that is a 100% growth, for the untrained reader, that sounds great! I think the bigger barametre is how many NEW licenses NOT sales. Sales can mean *ANYTHING*, the 17% growth could simply mean a massive rush by old customers of Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4 to uprading their software – they may have been offered a ripper (NZ/Aussie term for ‘good’) of a deal from their local Microsoft representative.
What is it, four or five record quarters in a row now for MSFT? And this during a recession economy? What would their performance be like in a healthy economy?
So much for the Linux/OSS “revolution” if it’s not even making a dent in MSFT growth. Isn’t that what they used to call it all the time, the Linux/OSS “revolution”?
If there is any ‘revolution’ going on in the IT world today, it’s Microsoft. Linux is just another product.
Netcraft statistics.. do you even understand what Netcraft numbers present?
Take a look at this one:
http://www.port80software.com/surveys/top1000webservers/
Enjoy.
Yes MS is making a lot of money, and so…
It will continue to do so for a long long time…
And you know what? I don’t Care!!
No I don’t Hate Microsoft, I just deeply love Freedom, so my choice is made.
Keep up the good (or bad) job MS, make more money, increase your market share, show us the figures…. I JUST DON’T CARE.
I value my freedom more than anything…
who could have asked for a better catalyst to set off another futile round of windows 2003 vs. Linux disputes?
“”It said it was based on your needs.”
Well, if you NEED Apache, sure, you’ll use Apache. Same works for IIS. BUT if you can use either one, IIS is better choice.
Take look at those tables, IIS ALWAYS has advantage over Apache.
IIS 6 wins when we talk about speed, too.
Bugs? There’s new version of Apache every Monday and Tuesday, too.”
Having you seen Apache Bench marks on Linux Kernel 2.6.x?
Apparently not!
“Here are some reasons why people would choose Windows over Linux.
1) Unique, mission-critical systems – Microsoft supports their OS for 7 years. The average “free as in beer” Linux distribution runs for 2 years. People aren’t stupid enough to have to migrate and face all those headaches every two years. Red Hat Linux supports Linux for 7 years too, but they end up costing more than Windows.”
Microsoft supports their OS for 7 years??? Ha, they just anounced yesterday that support for win2k will end at the end of June 2005.
Let’s count: 2000 (win2k came in later summer 2000), 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 1/2 of 2005 = 5yrs….
Sorry
And Microsoft is winning no matter how much you hate it. Look at the numbers.
Actually, Linux growth in server space is bigger than Windows growth. So looking at the numbers one can say that Linux is winning (though both are moslty making gains off of UNIX).
Business doesn’t really care what the FOSS crowd thinks.
And you don’t speak for Business. Linux is used by large corporations around the world, from Wall Street to auto makers, from the leading-edge special effects team to governments.
But don’t let facts get in the way of your love-hate relationship with Linux (i.e. you claim to develop for Linux yet every time you have a chance to criticize it, you do…)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=137637&cid=11509139
Take a look at this one: