Linux servers keep growing, Windows & Unix keep shrinking
Summary: 2011 saw, according to IDC, Linux servers grow while Windows and Unix servers numbers shrank. In 2012, Linux's server future looks brighter than ever.
Linux servers are soaring.
In 2011, we saw, according to IDC's latest Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, factory revenue in the worldwide server market grew for Linux while it shrank for Windows and Unix. What I find especially interesting about this is that IDC doesn't measure when you or your company install Linux on a bare-metal server or a re-purposed server, which is historically how Linux got into companies, but only servers with Linux already pre-installed.
That means more and more customers are asking IBM, HP and Dell, the big three server hardware vendors, for Linux on their hardware. Specifically, IDC found that "Linux server demand was positively impacted by high performance computing (HPC) and cloud infrastructure deployments, as hardware revenue improved 2.2% year over year in 4Q11 to $2.6 billion. Linux servers now represent 18.4% of all server revenue, up 1.7 points when compared with the fourth quarter of 2010.
Its competitors? "Windows server demand subsided slightly in 4Q11 as hardware revenue decreased 1.5% year over year. Quarterly revenue of $6.5 billion for Windows servers represented 45.8% of overall quarterly factory revenue, up 2.6 points over the prior year's quarter."
As has long been the case, Unix is the server operating system that really got knocked around. "Unix servers experienced a revenue decline of 10.7% year over year to $3.4 billion representing 24.2% of quarterly server revenue for the quarter. IBM grew Unix server revenue 2.5% year-over-year and gained 7.9 points of Unix server market share when compared with the fourth quarter of 2010."
What that translates into is "fourth-ranked Oracle experienced a year-over-year revenue decline of 11.5% in 4Q11 to a 5.2% share of market while Fujitsu, ranked number 5, experienced a 10.5% decrease in factory revenue holding 3.4% revenue share in 4Q10." While Oracle also has a Linux distribution for IDC's hardware server measurement purposes, Oracle and Fujitsu saw their income go down as their Solaris Unix-powered systems continue to decline.
As Jim Zemlin, chairman of The Linux Foundation observed in his blog, "IDC attributes some of that Linux success to its role in what the analyst firm calls "density-optimized" machines, which are really just white box servers, and are responsible for a lot of the growth in the server market. These machines have gained popularity in a space still squeezed on budget and that continues to be commoditized. But there are other factors at play for Linux's success over its rivals."
These are, Zemlin wrote, "Our latest survey of the world's largest enterprise Linux users found that Total Cost of Ownership, technical superiority and security were the top three drivers for Linux adoption. These points support Linux's maturity and recent success. Everyone is running their data centers with Linux. Stock exchanges, supercomputers, transportation systems and much more are using Linux for mission-critical workloads."
In addition, Linux's growth owes a lot to "the accelerated pace by which companies are migrating to the cloud. Long a buzzword, the cloud is getting real, right now. While there is still work to do for Linux and the cloud, there is no denying its dominant role in today's biggest cloud companies: Amazon and Google to name just two."
Amazon's EC2 cloud, for example, has recently been estimated to have not quite half-a-million servers. And, what powers all those servers of the most well-known public cloud? It's a Red Hat Linux variant with the Xen hypervisor running on top of it.
Zemlin also notes that "The mass migration to cloud computing has been quickened due, in part, to the rising level of data: both the amount of data enterprises are dealing with but the also how fast that data is growing. IDC this week predicted that the 'Big Data' business will be worth $16.9B in three years."
It's not just the Linux guys who see Big Data as being a Linux and open-source play. Benjamin S. Woo, IDC Storage Systems program vice president said in a statement that, "The significant growth rate in revenue is underscored by the large number of new open source projects that drive infrastructure investments."
Corporate Linux users already know this. The Linux Foundation's enterprise survey showed that 72 percent of the world's largest Linux users were already planning to add more Linux servers in the next 12 months to support the rising level of data in the enterprise, while only 36 percent said they would be adding more Windows servers to support big data.
All-in-all, things are looking good for Linux servers and their users in 2012. Perhaps the biggest problem Linux-smart companies will face is finding enough trained Linux professionals to man all their servers. More than eighty percent of companies that use Linux are making hiring Linux professionals a priority.
Related Stories:
Is Ubuntu becoming a big name in enterprise Linux servers?
Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 2 arrives with Linux 3.0 kernel, btrfs
SUSE ships Enterprise Linux SP2, the first under new management
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Talkback
Linux servers keep growing, Windows & Unix keep shrinking
SJVN & IDC
Just his way of spinning things, I guess.
Yet he never mentions that companies with Windows site licenses do the same. He's assuming that [b]every[/b] bare metal server that ships will be loaded with Linux, when many companies will just replace the hardware and move existing Windows server licenses over, or installed with Windows server via existing site licenses
These aren't counted either by IDC, right?
You assume, he doesn't
Linux owns HPC, Cloud and embedded. It continues to do well in enterprise servers (at the expense of windows) and big iron (expense of unix). It's a wonderful story.
Only one exchange server to retire at our company and we're free. Predates me, stuck around for the last remaining blackberry users.
Developers the first to jump the windows ship, it only took a couple of different machines to show what's possible and the dam had broken. Now Linux servers and dev desktops (rhel&netbeans) with generous sprinkling of Macs and iDevices.
I assume nothing
[i]What I find especially interesting about this is that IDC doesn't measure when you or your company install[b] Linux[/b] on a bare-metal server or a re-purposed server[/i]
Not "Linux or Windows", just "Linux".
No assumption needed, he says it straight out.
Feeling left out Wilie?
Sounds like it.
I see those that speak the truth on these boards
Mr. Vaughan-Nichols can say what he wishes, it does not change the truth no matter how many times he says it.
:|
TV sockpuppets
Yes, that's why you downgraded me you hypocritical fake pointy eared shill.
Missed the point William...
The point that SJVN makes is that Windows is bought and counted - always! Whereas Linux isn't! Some severs that may have come with Win installed (and thus counted as Win Servers in the stats) but then have Linux installed (so Win gets counted +1 when in fact should be +1 Linux - stats incorrect by 2 in Win favour), same for DIY servers (Win +0, Linux +0 - stats in favour of Win by 1).
By my understanding Win servers are always counted! Win gets counted when the Server or OS is bought (pre-installed hardware or DIY/re-purposed respectively). Whereas Linux is only counted if bought as pre-installed Linux hardware!
The only time the stats would be skewed in Win favour would be if the server was bought with Linux pre-installed and then repurposed with Win OS (but would still only be +1 Linux as the Win OS would still be counted unless it was pirate).
I fail to see where the spin is, seems pretty basic logic to me....
Kudos volunteer workers, not realizing just how much they are giving away
Garbage
It's more a matter of how [b]selfless[/b] they chose to be. A concept foreign to you.
Not given away
Credit where due.
Now, it would be miserable as a home PC. No "friendly" browser, no useful photo or word processing apps... who uses Python to handle spreadsheets?
That's where Windows shines. Windows tries to be the "White Box Appliance" OS, just as Mac OSX (a flavor of Unix at the core) does. Both do well as home PC OS and small business networking OS. Places where the "Do it Yourself" Linux OS has never caught on.
In the "Linux is better/Windows is better" debate, people forget they are different tools and you use the tool that's fit for the job, not change the job to suit the tool.
Linux at Home
I can also view most video formats.
I can also do what Microsoft does, and run Linux as a shield for Windows.
There are some minuses though.
First, Games, if you are a WoW type, or Steam addict, then Linux doesn't have what you need. Those games are Windows only, at the moment. Though the move from Native Code to HTML5 will change that.
Second, Windows works like most Computer Phobes expect. They hate Hate HATE it, but are afraid to try something else, and have to go through all the pain of learning something else all over again.
Third, Netflicks doesn't have a Linux Player. It's also very hard to get to work in Wine.
Those three reasons are why I have both on my home laptop. But, I find that I am quite happy to be in Linux 80% of the time. This is as a home computer user.
Bare Kernel
Ditto for Windows Server. It's called the Core option. Server 2008 supports it, and the upcoming Server 2013 (or whatever it ends up being called) will, too.
Meh...
What's wrong with backing up what one says?
Absolutely agreed!
Linux servers keep growing, Windows & Unix keep shrinking
When you read between the lines and look at what the report really says you will see that linux growth was forced due to its inability to handle tasks as well as its competitors. This is not the kind of growth and publicity you should be bragging about. Its only a matter of time before people realize linux was the wrong choice and they migrate away from it.
That's fairly unbelievable
You're a joke, and not even a funny one.