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October 14, 2007 3:30 AM PDT

Apache's lead over Microsoft's IIS goes poof

Posted by Matt Asay
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(Credit: Netcraft)

Technology writer Glyn Moody notes that open-source software developer Apache's lead in Web servers over Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) is at its skinniest ever: 10 percent.

Apache continues to gain (1 million sites last month). But Microsoft's IIS is also growing--and at a faster clip (3 million sites last month). As Glyn suggests, it may not matter: Apache's job may well be done in proving the viability of open-source projects and paving the way for many more.

I doubt, regardless, whether Microsoft is resting on its laurels. If you click through to the Netcraft page, you'll see Google growing at a torrid pace in the last graph. So maybe open source wins, after all, given Google's reliance on open source.

Matt Asay is general manager of the Americas and vice president of business development at Alfresco, and has nearly a decade of operational experience with commercial open source and regularly speaks and publishes on open-source business strategy. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
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Add a Comment (Log in or register) 6 comments
There is more to the story
by qwerty75 October 14, 2007 9:13 AM PDT
MS has a history of fudging its numbers.

How many of the IIS server are nothing more then the simple servers at crappy hosts like Go Daddy?

How many are hosting parked domains.

For high end, mission critical web servers, I don't think MS's weak offerings are making much of a dent.
Reply to this comment
There is more to the story
by qwerty75 October 14, 2007 9:13 AM PDT
MS has a history of fudging its numbers.

How many of the IIS server are nothing more then the simple servers at crappy hosts like Go Daddy?

How many are hosting parked domains.

For high end, mission critical web servers, I don't think MS's weak offerings are making much of a dent.
Reply to this comment
Market share is buyable
by ian.waring October 14, 2007 10:03 AM PDT
Netcraft's headline numbers tend to get skewed by relatively few domain parking and volume hosting sites. Traditional, Apache land due to it's zero cost, vs IIS where you tend to have to pay MS per instance. I can't imagine any other reason for those folks to move over to IIS other than there being financial incentives (not just zero cost) to do so.

When one company I used to work for subscribed to various Netcraft reports, we used to pay for an analogue of their survey taking out the effect of netblocks containing >100 hosts. I seem to recall that the Apache market share was just as resilient there as the headline "all hosts" as reported, but I haven't seen that graph in five years. Mike Prettejohn at Netcraft (mhp at netcraft dot com) may still run this regularly.

The other survey we used to subscribe to was their SSL survey (hosts with SSL certificates in place), which was an analogue for "trading e-commerce sites". Even 5 years ago, this was 50:50 between Apache and IIS... so it looked like Microsoft were successfully landing new e-commerce sites out of proportion to their overall market share at the time. For various reasons (not least to see the number of attempts cracking my personal Linux server every night, most of which try attacks which CERT characterises as Windows server exploits), this leaves me cold.

Ian W.
Reply to this comment
Market share is buyable
by ian.waring October 14, 2007 10:03 AM PDT
Netcraft's headline numbers tend to get skewed by relatively few domain parking and volume hosting sites. Traditional, Apache land due to it's zero cost, vs IIS where you tend to have to pay MS per instance. I can't imagine any other reason for those folks to move over to IIS other than there being financial incentives (not just zero cost) to do so.

When one company I used to work for subscribed to various Netcraft reports, we used to pay for an analogue of their survey taking out the effect of netblocks containing >100 hosts. I seem to recall that the Apache market share was just as resilient there as the headline "all hosts" as reported, but I haven't seen that graph in five years. Mike Prettejohn at Netcraft (mhp at netcraft dot com) may still run this regularly.

The other survey we used to subscribe to was their SSL survey (hosts with SSL certificates in place), which was an analogue for "trading e-commerce sites". Even 5 years ago, this was 50:50 between Apache and IIS... so it looked like Microsoft were successfully landing new e-commerce sites out of proportion to their overall market share at the time. For various reasons (not least to see the number of attempts cracking my personal Linux server every night, most of which try attacks which CERT characterises as Windows server exploits), this leaves me cold.

Ian W.
Reply to this comment
by oyunlarr April 19, 2008 2:23 PM PDT
Netcraft's headline numbers tend to get skewed by relatively few domain parking and volume hosting sites. Traditional, Apache land due to it's zero cost, vs IIS where you tend to have to pay MS per instance. I can't imagine any other reason for those folks to move over to IIS other than there being financial incentives (not just zero cost) to do so.

kiz oyunlari
Reply to this comment
by oyunlarr April 19, 2008 2:28 PM PDT
Netcraft's headline numbers tend to get skewed by relatively few domain parking and volume hosting sites. Traditional, Apache land due to it's zero cost, vs IIS where you tend to have to pay MS per instance. I can't imagine any other reason for those folks to move over to IIS other than there being financial incentives (not just zero cost) to do so. When one company I used to work for subscribed to various Netcraft reports, we used to pay for an analogue of their survey taking out the effect of netblocks containing >100 hosts. I seem to recall that the Apache market share was just as resilient there as the headline "all hosts" as reported, but I haven't seen that graph in five years. Mike Prettejohn at Netcraft (mhp at netcraft dot com) may still run this regularly. The other survey we used to subscribe to was their SSL survey (hosts with SSL certificates in place), which was an analogue for "trading e-commerce sites". Even 5 years ago, this was 50:50 between Apache and IIS... so it looked like Microsoft were successfully landing new e-commerce sites out of proportion to their overall market share at the time. For various reasons (not least to see the number of attempts cracking my personal Linux server every night, most of which try attacks which CERT characterises as Windows server exploits), this leaves me cold. Ian W. oyun
Reply to this comment
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About The Open Road

Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to the Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.

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