| Is Linux really losing market share to Windows? |
Oct. 26, 2007
Opinion -- Should we be ready, as Kent Brockman might put it, to "welcome our new Microsoft overlords," or are the IDC Quarterly Server Tracker figures not really reflecting the reality of how servers are used in businesses? I, for one, think that what IDC is measuring and what server operating systems people are really using are two entirely different things.
According to the IDG server report, the annual rate at which Linux is growing in the x86 server space has fallen from around 53 percent in 2003 to a negative 4 percent growth in calendar year 2006. During this same three-year span, Windows Server continued to report positive annual growth, outpacing the total growth rate in the x86 market by more than 4 percent in 2006. At the same time, worldwide Linux x86 server shipments dropped from the huge annual growth rate of about 45 percent in 2003 to growth of less than 10 percent in 2006. In short, the IDC figures show that Linux has actually lost market share to Windows Server over the last three years.
So it is time to start screaming in panic, start selling Novell and Red Hat stock for anything we can get, and enroll in MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) night classes? Eh, I don't think so.
Let's look closer at what IDG is really doing. First, the actual number of Linux servers is still increasing. What's “decreased” is its rate of increase. Despite the impression you may get from Microsoft ads, almost no one is turning in Linux servers for Windows servers.
What has happened is that, as IDC analyst Matt Eastwood told eWEEK, the rate of migration from Unix [to Linux has slowed] over the past few quarters." Why? "Because, much of the low-hanging fruit has been moved and the applications that remain on Unix are stickier because they are seen as business critical."
He's right. Unix on x86 servers has been crushed by Linux. Only die-hard SCO UnixWare and OpenServer customers are still running it. Solaris on SPARC has also largely been replaced by Linux on x86 servers. For these users, Linux was an easy switch. Jumping from Windows Server to Linux, or vice versa, while not rocket science, isn't anywhere near so easy.
With that being the case, it's no wonder that Linux's growth has slowed down. There's little left of the Unix market for it to conquer. As George Weiss, a Gartner analyst, said, "I expect that, around 2009, we will have seen the last application developed specifically for Unix."
This means that the x86 server field has been left, unless OpenSolaris really picks up steam, to a battle between Linux and Windows Server. Does it look to you, given IDC's numbers, like Linux is in trouble? Again, let's take a closer look at what IDC is actually measuring.
IDC, unlike many research companies, has the good grace to tell us what it is that it’s measuring in its major reports. For IDC Quarterly Server Tracker, IDC tells us, "IDC's server revenue includes components that are typically sold today as a server bundle, including frame or cabinet and all cables, processors, memory, communication boards, and OS."
OK, hands up, how many businesses buy Linux as part of a server bundle? A lot, yes, but most of the companies I know have made Linux servers out of older servers or workstations--anything with a CPU and some memory that's still running.
In my own office, I run five servers with Linux. None of them came with Linux. On a far bigger scale, SFGate.com, the Web site of the San Francisco Chronicle, is migrating three dozen servers from an old version of Red Hat Linux to CentOS Linux. Neither mine, nor the SF Gate servers, would ever show up on the IDC survey.
IDC's survey is really all about measuring new hardware server sales, not what people are actually using as servers. It's also not really measuring server virtualization. For example, IBM is currently consolidating about 3,900 of its own servers onto 33 System z mainframes running God only knows how many Linux virtual machines. Again, IDC, in this survey, is measuring hardware servers, not server instances.
As IDC analyst Al Gillen said, "We do need to remember that the Linux software ecosystem does not track exactly the same as does x86 hardware shipments." It surely doesn't.
Linux servers, on older or repurposed hardware, and as virtual machines, from everything I've seen, are continuing to grow at a very healthy clip. Windows Server is doing well too, but don't think for one moment that Windows is getting ready to push Linux out of the server room. It's not.
To borrow another quote from “The Simpsons,” this time from Bart, if you really think Windows Server is winning in the real IT world, "I'm not calling you a liar, but ... I can't think of a way to finish that sentence."
—Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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