Microsoft Vs Unix: Its a tie for the first time

Financial Express ^ | May 28, 2005 | Reuters

[Bush2000]

Windows computer servers tie with Unix in revenue

The worldwide computer server market grew 5.3 per cent to $12.1 billion in the first quarter, with revenue for servers running the Microsoft Corp Windows operating system equalling that of Unix servers for the first time, market research firm IDC said on Friday.

Revenue for Windows servers grew 12.3 per cent to $4.2 billion in the quarter while unit shipments grew 10.7 per cent. Unix servers saw 2.8 per cent revenue growth to $4.2 billion while unit shipments increased 5 per cent.

"The equal level of spending in both segments this quarter showed that Windows servers are gaining traction in the enterprise server space with a combination of deeper investment and richer configurations," said Jean Bozman, vice president of Enterprise Computing.

IDC said that overall server revenue grew for the eighth consecutive quarter as customers invest further in new infrastructure.

[antiRepublicrat]

How do you define 'heavily optimized'? If an application is compiled for a particular processor, do you think that the 'tested' apps would be more-heavily 'optimized' than the versions sold on the street

I know for a fact, straight from the programmers' mouths, that Photoshop is heavily optimized for both Wintel and Mac platforms, even down to assembly language level performance tweaking. In fact, it's heavily optimized for individual chip architectures within the platforms. Photoshop was even one of the first applications to support Intel's MMX way back when. They were also among the first to support the Mac's Altivec -- it's not their fault that Altivec is superior to MMX/SSE.

So saying "it's optimized for this so it's not realistic" in Photoshop's case isn't right.

However, Apple's marketing engine does tend to go into high spin mode sometimes. Back when the Pentium was way faster than the fastest G4 at almost any task, Apple was claiming the G4 was faster, but if you looked closer it was only faster on a couple of Photoshop operations. They don't need spin these days though, since the POWER4-derived (that's mainframes) PPC970 (a.k.a. G5) is a pretty awesome chip.

[antiRepublicrat]

Apple Computer Inc is the number five RISC/Unix vendor by box count, with 7,736 boxes sold. But with only $41.4m in sales, it is not in the top 10 when ranked by sales.

Maybe Apple isn't charging enough (you can't get a comparable Windows server that cheap). OTOH, do these stats include big iron? One mid-range mainframe can easily cost more than 25 loaded XServes.

[TechJunkYard]

... IDC also reported that Microsoft Windows servers also showed strong growth, as revenues and unit shipments grew 12.3 per cent and 10.7 per cent respectively, year over year - from a much larger installed base than that of Linux. Significantly, quarterly revenue of $4.2 billion for Windows servers represented 34.4 per cent of overall quarterly factory revenue, pulling even with quarterly revenue in the Unix server market.

No surprise here. People are discovering that it takes more Windows servers to do the work of the Unix servers they replace.

Also remember that SCO Unix is out of the picture now that they're stupidly driving themselves into bankruptcy.

[Golden Eagle]

I pay for every last one

Well that certainly draws into question your previous statements, when you said you only paid for your production servers, but built all your development servers from free source code. Looks like your claims change with the direction of the wind.

[Golden Eagle]

do these stats include big iron?

Yes, which is why Unix's current 10% of the shipment market brings in money equal to Windows 70% of the shipment market. Unfortunately for the *nix market overall, their total dollars are going down, and MS's percentage of the total dollars is going up.

[N3WBI3]

ahem... What I said was I pay the full fee for my production servers and buy bulk dev licenses 5 of 300 from Redhat... What I said in that conversation is that I *COULD* build dev from source if I chose (and used to do so before Redhats Developer License)..

[Question_Assumptions]

The Linux guys will applaud themselves out of a job: "Yay, open source! Where's my pink slip?"

I develop on Linux servers using an Open Source database, web server, and application server. How does my employer paying thousands of dollars for comparable commercial software licenses from Microsoft that would limit our ability to legally replicate the software on other servers without buying more licenses or run it across several different operating systems (I can run the software on the Linux servers, on a Windows 2000 web server, on your Windows XP demo laptop [a fully functional version of the entire web site], and on my Mac at home) improve my job security or even my ability to do my job?

[Golden Eagle]

SCO was left with no other choice but to fight lunix in the end. They tried to make money off of it, but like many are now finding, it's very very difficult if you don't package hardware with the deal. Others are just now finding out.

Novell Posts Wider 2Q Loss; Shares Slide

[Redcloak]

From Netcraft.com...

Market Share for Top Servers Across All Domains August 1995 - June 2005

Top Developers

Developer	May 2005	Percent	June 2005	Percent	Change
Apache	44072262	69.37	45172895	69.70	0.33
Microsoft	13049346	20.54	13131361	20.26	-0.28
Sun	1856222	2.92	1849471	2.85	-0.07
Zeus	562614	0.89	580844	0.90	0.01

[Golden Eagle]

Apache runs on Windows, and Unix/OSX, etc.

[Golden Eagle]

That link was broke, sorry.

Novell Posts Wider 2Q Loss; Shares Slide

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cmp/20050527/tc_cmp/163701235

Novell Wednesday reported a wider second-quarter loss than in the year-ago period, as license revenue dropped significantly and expenses increased.

Shares of Novell fell 14 cents, or 2 percent, to close at $6.28 on the Nasdaq, and then slid 44 cents, or 7 percent, to $5.84 in aftermarket activity.

Losses increased to $15.8 million, or 4 cents per share, from a loss of $15.4 million, or 4 cents per share, last year. Excluding items, such as restructuring, development expenses, and long-term investment impairments, the company reported earnings of $1 million, or break even per share.

Total revenue rose 1 percent to $297.1 million from $294 million. On average, analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial expected a profit of 3 cents per share on revenue of $301.9 million.

Novell reported a significant drop in new software licenses, which is the amount of money corporations pay to continue using software and is considered a barometer for earnings at software companies. Software license revenue fell to $45.8 million from $60.3 million last year.

During the second fiscal quarter 2005, Novell recognized revenue of $8 million from subscriptions to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, which saw sales of 19,000 units in the quarter.

[TechJunkYard]

Unfortunately for the *nix market overall, their total dollars are going down..

Source? B2K's article contradicts you.

[TechJunkYard]

SCO was left with no other choice but to fight lunix [sic] in the end.

Well, they certainly picked the wrong way to do it. Suing a big pocket with no evidence to back up assertions is sheer lunacy.

[Golden Eagle]

Down from what they would have been. Linux brings in a fraction that Unix does per box.

[Bush2000]

Research before writing. Microsoft had the cheaper bid in the end by dipping into their fund to give a 35% price cut, and threw in millions of dollars of free training and support, plus cost-saving license concessions. Munich still went with IBM, although that bid was only slightly less than Microsoft's original bid.

Wrong. You're looking solely at the up-front costs. What is more expensive in the long run is support. IBM has offered Munich free consulting, because that's the only way that Munich would agree to the contract.

"How is it that for eight months a team of up to a dozen IBM consultants has been toiling in the data centers and computer rooms of the Munich city government--free of charge?"

Migration problems aren't just because of the OS.

Uh, the OS is the *primary* cause of cost overruns. It is the reason that Munich migrated in the first place.

[TChris]

However, Apple's marketing engine does tend to go into high spin mode sometimes. Back when the Pentium was way faster than the fastest G4 at almost any task, Apple was claiming the G4 was faster, but if you looked closer it was only faster on a couple of Photoshop operations. They don't need spin these days though, since the POWER4-derived (that's mainframes) PPC970 (a.k.a. G5) is a pretty awesome chip.

That's what I was referring to. I also agree that the G5 is an impressive piece of work. I've always liked the Motorola architecture better than the bizarre stuff Intel created. Of course, personally I like the AMD Opteron architecture better than either of those, but that's me. :-)

I wasn't intending to slam the G5, nor any of Apple's technology. My point was that Apple's marketing approach tends to alienate the technologically savvy when they ultra-spin. They have good, even great, tech; just let the honest facts speak for themselves.

Also, I'm not sure if it's a good idea to constantly emphasize Apple's niche market reputation with campaigns like "Think Different". Would it be against some tenet in the Apple code of ethics to look on the masses with something other than derision?

[TechJunkYard]

No link then. As I suspected, you're pulling it out of your butt.

[Bush2000]

By far, socialist and communist countries tend to ride bicycles more than non-socialist countries. Therefore, we should all stop riding bicycles. And the Chinese prefer the color red, which is also generally symbolic of communism, so I'd better get rid of my red car.

Bogus analogy. We're not shipping bicycles over to socialist and communist countries free of charge for their use.

[Golden Eagle]

I already gave you a link in post 29. If you're any good at math, you'll see that the average Unix server brings in roughly 7 times the income of the average Lunix box. Of course that does require some remedial skills you probably lack.

[TechJunkYard]

The Unix market was somewhat peppy in the quarter, with shipments up 2.2% to 137,349 units and revenues up 1.5% to $4.07bn. If that doesn't sound exactly perky to you, the stabilization of the Unix market, which has been plummeting for years, is something of a cause for jubilation among the Unix vendors.

And this also contradicts your statement above that *ix "total dollars are going down".

Nice.