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Linux Server Sales to Reach $9.1 Billion by 2008 167

Posted by CowboyNeal from the popular-penguins dept.
dunric writes "ZDNet is reporting that sales of servers using Linux will reach a whopping $9.1 billion by 2008. Annual revenue for Linux servers is expected to grow by a healthy 22.8 percent, compared to just 3.8 percent for the overall server market. Additionally, Linux servers will account for nearly 26% of all server shipments."
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Linux Server Sales to Reach $9.1 Billion by 2008 More

Linux Server Sales to Reach $9.1 Billion by 2008

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  • Wow, $9.1 billion sales (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    of a free program. From this we can conclude unit sales of Linux to be about Infinity Times 9.1. That's pretty good.
  • From those numbers, it seems like Linux is having its main growth because of it's price, rather than the OS itself. Numbers were ~50% of blades, ~20% of rack-mounts, and ~10% of free standing.

    • Re:Interesting.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MC Negro ( 780194 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @03:18AM (#11015781) Journal

      From those numbers, it seems like Linux is having its main growth because of it's price, rather than the OS itself. Numbers were ~50% of blades, ~20% of rack-mounts, and ~10% of free standing
      This raises an interesting point. If pricepoint is genuinely what is the deciding factor for these predictions, what will happen when OpenSolaris is release?
      From the article -
      Sales of servers using Linux will grow faster than the overall market at least through 2008, when customers will spend $9.1 billion for machines using the open-source operating system, market researcher IDC forecast Monday

      The results highlight the spread of the operating system, a relatively new competitor to Unix versions such as Sun Microsystems' Solaris and to Microsoft Windows. The top four server sellers--IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Dell--all support Linux, though Sun steers customers to Solaris.
      This is not a troll, but I have never understood the wide-spread embracing of Linux to be a direct result of anything but price-point and community support. I hate near everything about the way Linux is structured when compared to other flavors of UNIX, and I am not a fan of the kernel internals, yet I keep going back to it because of the aforementioned reasons. To be fair, I was introduced to UNIX with SunOS and the BSD family before being introduced to Linux, and lately I've been sharpening my skills with AIX and some of their enterprise solutions, so I may be totally missing the point of Linux.

      Let's talk hypothetical here - Let's say Sun releases Solaris under a nice license that satisfies everybody - the BSD nuts, the Stallman-worshipers, and the corporate players [bear with me here; I realize I'm treading fairytale water], and let's say the community loves it and starts hacking away at it like a hillbilly with a hatchet. Right there, the Linux pricepoint and community support is matched.

      I predict in the future we will see some more UNIX versions opened up, specifically, AIX. This is based entirely on speculation and the late-night readings of IBM papers, but I wholeheartedly believe in the next 10 years, IBM will either completely open the source or share a great portion of it (barring a SCO victory).

      I myself have always preferred commercial UNIX to community efforts (although the *BSDs are near and dear to my heart) and have used Linux out of necessity, not out of direct superiority to commercial UNIX. My point is that if (or when) commercial versions of UNIX (such as Solaris and AIX) match the benefits of Linux, Linux may be the kid without a gimmick. But again, this is based entirely on the premise that Linux's gimmick is limited to the two previously mentioned, so if I am totally missing something, would some more-informed Linux guru clarify :-)?

      Eh, it's late. Too much RPG IV.
      • Hardware support. Linux has a much greater range of drivers than Solaris, which holds it back on x86.

        Still, I was first introduced to UNIX with RedHat 8, since moved to Gentoo, and have tried OpenBSD, although it didn't quite fit my tastes.

      • Re:Interesting.... (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You are missing one other major point, vendor lock in. If you run a company and develop your own in house applications, it is much more difficult to switch from AIX to Solaris than it is to switch from Red Hat Linux to SUSE Linux. Porting between different Linux distros is much much much easier than porting between different flavours of Unix.

        OpenOffice.org, Mozilla (all 3 major programs), StarOffice, AMSN, America's Army, Unreal Tournament and Enemy Territory. I just named you 10 applications that will run
        • Unfortunately, in the real world, few people actually care much about vendor lock in. If they did, there would be no monopolies, a la Microsoft.

          We'd all be kidding ourselves if we thought that Linux's growth wasn't largely fueled by it's price. Most companies look at Linux quite simply: It works -enough- that since it's free, they don't care about the stuff it doesn't do because they likely won't need that anyways.

          Ultimately, the price and the product are what people care about. The parents point was simp

      • Re:Interesting.... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by pyat ( 303115 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @04:02AM (#11015938) Journal
        The parent post is maybe not so far off the mark, though i'd like to posit a slightly different way of looking at things. I believe the situation would be clearer (for once!) if we wrote GNU/Linux instead of Linux.

        Linux is just a kernel. Another child post mentioned it has good hardware support compared to solaris, i'm sure there are some other good points (e.g. a lot of architectures supported, embedded apps, a formidable base of experienced open-source developers, etc.,) that could mean Linux wouldn't just die if Solaris became free/Free.

        But what most people think of as Linux, and what is in fact the largest part of, GNU/Linux is the set of userland tools we use. From the basics like bash, tar, grep, sed, awk, etc., to the compilers (gcc, etc.,), and up to the desktop level tools (KDE-family, Gnome-family, mozilla, openoffice, and so on).

        Many of these tools can/are(!) ALSO be used on Solaris systems as appropriate/preferred.

        If the Solaris licence is as free as the parent post hypothesizes, then this future is great! We can have a GNU/Solaris system if we want, Debian could offer a Debian-Solaris option (in the same vein as the Debian-NetBSD port), we can use bits of Solaris to improve Linux... All grist to the Free-Software mill.
        • Many of these tools can/are(!) ALSO be used on Solaris systems as appropriate/preferred.

          Try out Solaris 10 [sun.com], it's pretty funny to see the default desktop. It must have taken those Sun engineers hours to search & replace Gnome with Java Desktop.

        • Re:Interesting.... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by wolf31o2 ( 778801 )

          But what most people think of as Linux, and what is in fact the largest part of, GNU/Linux is the set of userland tools we use. From the basics like bash, tar, grep, sed, awk, etc., to the compilers (gcc, etc.,), and up to the desktop level tools (KDE-family, Gnome-family, mozilla, openoffice, and so on).

          I think you completely missed that a good portion of the GNU tools can be replaced by a BSD userland and it is still Linux. Also, the big guys, like KDE, Gnome, and Mozilla, have nothing to do with GNU, a

          • and mod the one before it down.

            I am so sick of this "ITS CALLED GNU?LINUX YOU ASSH*LE!" crap that is going on.

            I call it whatever Linus calls it since its his creation. If Debian wants to call it gnu/linux then let them. If Redhat wants to call it just Linux then its fine too.

            I bet I could call it Schrawux. Who cares?

            Its just flamebait and not all of a Linux distro is gnu so in essence does not pass the gnu test. Debian comes close if you select to only install free software but that is it.

            Linux can be

      • what will happen when OpenSolaris is release?

        People are not gonna buy it if it runs on Sun's hardware alone. First OpenSolaris -- if it ever sees the light of day -- will have to match the many hardware ports Linux enjoys today. I don't think that's easy. And then, i don't see the point of Sun opening Solaris for everyone if it's gonna likely dilute the sales of their real cash-cow: their hardware.

        Unless the license talks about freedom and fees... :)

      • Re:Interesting.... (Score:3, Informative)

        by jeif1k ( 809151 )
        Let's talk hypothetical here - Let's say Sun releases Solaris under a nice license that satisfies everybody [...] Right there, the Linux pricepoint and community support is matched.

        Linux may suck, but to me, Solaris and AIX suck much, much worse.

        so if I am totally missing something, would some more-informed Linux guru clarify :-)?

        You know, I can't presume to tell you what you should like.

        To me, AIX's system management was a constant source of problems, their logical volume manager was a disaster, and
      • Solaris 10 will probably look more like BSD than linux. I think that there are more factors here than just price.
        1. Hardware Sales. Linux is being pushed by IBM, HP, Dell, SGI, etc. How many of them will push OpenSolaris knowning that Sun is looking to turn the future hardware sales over to themselves? Few.
        2. How many hardware systems is Linux on? huge number. Only BSD is on more systems. How many is open solaris on? 2. And Sun has already pulled solaris off x86 once before and will do it again if they ever fe
      • Well the thing about open source OS's, you have the potential to have _mergers_ of functionality/OS's. My own sense(and I'm not a Linux guru) is we have 2 major Open Source OS's out there right now:Linux and the BSD's-and each have their own niche. It isn't obvious to me that AIX, Solaris won't just get merged into the other Open Source OS's in time. I haven't seen a lot of compelling innovation from Sun or IBM recently in the area of OS's-but we'll see.
    • Mm.. if I raise the price of Linux servers by 20% , will there be a predictable 20% rise in revenue for Linux ?

      Statisticians say "YES" . Economists "Supply and Demand equality fundamentals suggest that the profits would increase but not upto the 20% mark". Of course this brings up a number of "Simplest answer is often right" idiots babbling about growth.

      Strangely, Managers have a wierd rationale built into their head that says "You get what you pay for". So if an employee draws 6 times the salary of anoth

    • Re:Interesting.... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Diag ( 711760 )
      I have seen Linux displacing other O/S'es for consolidation purposes, and usually Linux itself is not the driving factor.

      For example, VMWare/ESX is gaining a lot of market consolidating hundreds of Windows servers (usually test/dev) down to a dozen or so Intel servers running VMWare/ESX, which is Redhat Linux running VMWare. But the Linux side of it is almost invisible. I have spoken to VMWare administrators who refused to believe that it was running on Linux.

      Also, I've seen large Oracle databases mov

  • ZDnet = page hit whores (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SethJohnson ( 112166 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @02:49AM (#11015678) Homepage Journal


    Methinks ZDnet published this prediction simply to exploit the predictable slashdot-effect response to such a story. I am projecting a 22% increase in ad revenues from their banner ads featured with this story at the tail end of 2004.

  • Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ryanw ( 131814 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @02:50AM (#11015684)
    This news is interesting but what would be interesting to see is which markets Linux servers are eating up. People of /. are going to assume "FINALLY THE DOWN FALL OF MICROSOFT!". But the truth of the matter is Linux is probably eating up the markets of AIX, HP-UX, SunOS, Alpha, etc. Look at Sun's stock.... Down over 30% from last year? Even if this statistic is true I don't think Microsoft is probably losing any business but rather our fellow UNIX brothers. Go Linux!?

    • Re:Interesting (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      So what you're saying is...

      BSD was killed by... Linux, on the internet, with the GPL?

      Man, I must've drank way too much, I don't remember ANY of those in MY Clue set...
    • It doesn't really matter. What linux did was stop MS from gaining a monopoly on the server and that alone is worth everything.

      Having said that there is no doubt Linux will eat into the MS market both on the server and the client. Maybe not enough to kill them or anything but enough to make them "just another company".

      In summary, Linux will collapse the Unix market into itself, linux has stopped the MS juggernaut in it's tracks, linux will slowly gain desktop share. All and all not bad for something that's

    • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rseuhs ( 322520 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @04:00AM (#11015929)
      Yes, go Linux:
      • First Linux does eat up Microsoft's marketshare, no matter how often MS sais otherwise. Just look at this [securityspace.com] for an idea, or even at this [securityspace.com] Yes, that's right, Linux has already marginalized Windows in some markets. In Germany it's hard to find a webhoster even offering Windows (and when they do, they charge about twice the usual fees). Windows is doomed in central and eastern Europe, all the usual network effects (it's established! the people know it!) work against it there and there are no more advantages left.
      • Then what Linux does is what we all wanted, right? Unify Unix. What's the point of having similar but slightly incompatible systems from IBM, HP and Sun? Linux unifies Unix in a way that even if you don't run Linux, it will be compatible to Linux (compatibility layers for Solaris and AIX). Of course a unified Unix is also a lot stronger versus Windows than a balkanized one. "Unix is incompatible to itself" and "Unix needs overpriced hardware" were the 2 biggest pro-Windows sales arguments. No more.
      • That page doesn't mention MS or Linux - you can't just assume that Apache==Linux. I'm as excited as you are about MS being pushed out of the web sever market, but you need to quote the right stats.

        • Re:Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)

          by rseuhs ( 322520 )
          Sure Apache is not Linux.

          However the original statement was that that Linux only cuts into Unix marketshare, which is clearly proven wrong by these stats because there are 2 realistic possibilities:

          • Linux replaces Unix and Windows
          • Linux replaces only Windows while other Unices maintain marketshare

          For both possibilities, the original statement is clearly wrong.

          (Yes I do know that Apache runs on Windows, but I also know that it isn't done very often, sorry.)

          • Linux replaces only Windows while other Unices maintain marketshare

            Hmm... First hand I have seen aix servers and solaris servers replaced with Linux servers in an enterprise environment.
            I wish netcraft was working, I wanted to show you the stats... look em up sometime for www.americanexpress.com.
            You can't just show stats of how Apache is 75% of the websites, Apache used to have even higher market website market share back 5 years ago and microsoft had almost no market share as a webserver. (at least

            • Completely wrong, Apache was at roughly 50% 5 years ago and is now at roughly 70%
              • Completely wrong, Apache was at roughly 50% 5 years ago and is now at roughly 70%
                You didn't even read what i wrote... Sure, 5 years ago apache was probably around 50% but Netscape Enterprise WebServer was probably the other 25% ... Now netscape accounts for almost nothing on the web.
      • With so many distros offering so many different features and without a standard package installer... with every vendor maintaining their own kernel tree just to "out feature" another distro... how can you possibly say that linux will unify the unix market when the linux market itself isn't very well unified?

        Microsoft has the unparalleled advantage of a single vision driving their platform and software. Right now, the babbling bazaar that is Linux has too many voices and too many chefs to spoil the soup.

        • With so many distros offering so many different features and without a standard package installer... with every vendor maintaining their own kernel tree just to "out feature" another distro... how can you possibly say that linux will unify the unix market when the linux market itself isn't very well unified?

          RPM is pretty much the standard now (also defined in the LSB), so while different distributions might have different methods of installing a RPM, there is a unified packaging format.

          • Except that a whole lot of newish distros are based on debian and use .deb , eg Knoppix, Mepis, Lindows, Xandros, Ubuntu, Libranet, Progeny. They aren't getting less popular - but alien generally works for rpms. The real problem is that generally what is inside these packages is infact very tightly coupled to everything else about a distro. This is where the LSB has failed, and needs more work.

            Tbh, package formats is not a level of integration that matters. Lets face it, on windows, you either get a sicko
            • On Windows there is no system and all the packaging systems on Linux are a lot better than that. - There is absolutely no problem in having an installer in Linux that works on all Linux distributions. (And actually for example skype is offering packages that work on all Linux distros, as an example.) So the whole packaging system is an additional bonus, nobody is forced to use it, neither the users nor the creators of software.
      • "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" - Adolf Hitler
        "One World, One web, One program" - Microso...er.. Linux Guru?

        PS: its a joke. laugh.

    • Re:Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)

      by shirai ( 42309 )
      Oh, I tend to differ. We are mostly a Microsoft company and I had no confidence, in the past, with going to Linux.

      But now we are slowly but surely switching many of our servers over. For me, the biggest drive to the new servers comes from the fact that Linux is getting as easy to use as Windows. Have you seen, for example, the MySql Administrator GUI? That with something like Navicat makes it a pure SQL Server killer for web applications. I admit I'm writing on Windows, but the actual server will run on Li
    • ryanw said:

      ...the truth of the matter is Linux is probably eating up the markets of AIX, HP-UX, SunOS, Alpha...

      You say that like its a bad thing.

      The commoditization of the OS has already begun - and will end with a shakeup that leaves Linux distributions on the top of the heap. If you depend upon an in-house OS to float your business model, you need to think about getting a new model.

      Why, you may ask, does Microsoft do so well? The answer is the twin power of forced obsolescense and incompatibility.

  • Tip of the iceburg (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NZheretic ( 23872 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @02:53AM (#11015699) Homepage Journal
    IDC has always based its survey data around sales of servers with Linux pre-installed. IDC barely scratches the surface. They do not count the number of whitebox systems sold, OEM systems sold with Microsoft's OSs and older hardware now running Linux fulltime.

    The last eight Intel servers I installed were all assembled from good quality motherboards, fans and better quality ATX power supplies into run of the mill whitebox full/mid tower cases.

    If space is not an issue then I find that taking time to assemble a well laid out PC case delivers better reliability than Intel based 1U or 2U rackmounted servers.

    • You're dead on of course. The do it yourself attitude of linuxers does not translate well to "buy a server from dell."
    • If space is not an issue ... you don't live in Europe.

      If connectivity is the issue, you dont want your PCs laid out like cows in a field, you want them like battery chickens (clearly you are a farming type :-)

    • This really is quite true. Take my company, for example. We have multiple IBM BladeCentres maxed out with blades. None of these machines came with any OS installed. In fact, they all came as parts and were assembled by us prior to installation. They all run Red Hat Enterprise. To IDC, these would be "non-existant" servers in their counts. They would not count for any OS, but they are definitely Linux sales. In fact, we even have proper entitlements for each machine with Red Hat. I would be pretty w
    • That doesn't count as part of the $9.1 billion dollar Linux server market. Because a computer company didn't sell you a Linux server. That's what they're counting.

  • As versus Windoze servers ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Taco Cowboy ( 5327 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @02:54AM (#11015702) Journal


    "A whooping $9.1 billion by 2008", or so it is reported.

    But what about the Windoze servers ?

    "A whimper $18.2 billion by 2008" ?

  • Servers Running Linux (Score:3, Insightful)

    by halcyon1234 ( 834388 ) <halcyon1234@hotmail.com> on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @02:55AM (#11015703) Journal
    {sigh} Why do I have this awful feeling that the reason there will be 2.8 Gargillion dollars worth of sales will be because everyone and their brother is going to open up a "Servers that Run Linux" company? And you know that the 2.8 Suptexillion dollars will be coming out of the pockets of companies that don't realize that they can just buy a server and install Linux themselves. Or hire someone to do it for the fraction of the cost of a "Linux Server".

    Seriously, saying "Linux Server" to a CEO has one of two effects. One, they glaze over and continue using their familiar "Windows Server". Two, they think you're really smart and give you lots of money. Sure, there's the rare third case where they'll realize "Linux = OS, Server = Hardware", but chances are they're the CIO.

    Does this mean I should open a "Servers The Run Linux" eBusiness? Amazonux.com, perhaps?

    • Linux == Kernel, actualy.
    • The software may be free, but quality service comes at a price.

      You must realize that a lot of this price is probably because of _people_ who really charge for their expertise rather than the software in and of itself.

      Good programmers and system administrators are hard to come by, no matter what the outsourcing crowd would have you believe.
    • It's 3am.
      Shit, the server's doing some weird shit. Where that support contract? What you just downloaded it and instelled it well I'm going to pay you the standard support call cost and you'd better come round and sort the fucking thing out then.

      TCO Just went through the roof.

      True most small companies don't want to fork out for support, the medium ones can't afford full time support staff but the bigger ones always seem to outsource (supporting PC's ain't our business!).

  • Not real growth. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @03:01AM (#11015728)
    Everybody knows that people buy Linux servers just so they can install pirated versions of Windows on them!

    Linux may be sitting high and pretty on the desktop market, but it has to create a usable UI to break on thru to the server market.

  • But Windows has a lower TCO and better performance (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nine Tenths of The W ( 829559 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @03:06AM (#11015744)
    That's what the adverts on Slashdot say, anyway

  • Forecast for when? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wulfbyte ( 722147 ) <wulfbyte&wulfbyte,net> on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @03:08AM (#11015747)
    Whenever I see words like forecast and prediction buried, I wonder what the motivation of the writer is. I dug around a very little bit and found this link to an IDC ress release that this is based on (I think). IDC - Press Release http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=pr2004_1 1_02_093312 [idc.com] Reading the press release, I could only think to myself "uhm, duh, who couldn't see that coming." I do wonder how they came up with the time frame though. Four years seems like a long time to predict anything in the IT business with any accuracy.

  • not dollars, but numbers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by b17bmbr ( 608864 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @03:12AM (#11015759)
    the dollar amont is not as important as the number of units. 9.1 billion is like, what, 100 sun servers? seriously though, the numbers of servers shipped is more important. because alot of that will be replacing NT servers. and alot of that will be new server infrastructure. every linux server sold is one less windows server, regardless whether it replaces a sun/ibm or not. dollar sales are a relative figure. what matters if the total number of servers, or market share. and what matters is what they're used for. are they just serving up web pages or are they running the backbone of business web applications? if linux is relegated to the periphery, it won't matter a whole lot.
  • I would have liked to see what percentage of servers OS's like Solaris, Microsoft, and other *nix made up of the total "internet".

  • By 2008?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wirelessbuzzers ( 552513 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @03:22AM (#11015792)
    Who will be able to predict the market in 2008? With spam, viruses and hacker attacks escalating, and Longhorn due to be released... who really knows what the market will be like then?

  • ZDNET (Score:3, Insightful)

    by harryoyster ( 814652 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @03:23AM (#11015795) Homepage
    ZDNET is just another publishing company that generally have b grade IT writers. Just look at the spam software show down. Hangon.. where is spamassassin.. maybe they didnt pay zdnet enough money to advertise thier product so it wasnt included.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @03:24AM (#11015803)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Dell [dell.com] has a pretty healthy selection of Linux options these days and of course there's always Penguin Computing [penguincomputing.com]

    Where do you buy your Linux servers?

  • I havent been counted... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @04:13AM (#11015974)
    Where I work, we all have servers as desktop development machines (typing this on a dual xeon, etc). We get our machines from Dell, and usually default to the Windows XP setup. As soon as we get them we reformat and install RedHat Enterprise or Fedora. I guess that means we arent counted in the stats, but instead are counted in the 'Windows Server' statistics, even though we are all using Linux servers. So I would think the Linux server stats are probably higher than stated.

    • Dude, you can buy servers with Linux pre-installed from Dell. You can buy servers with no OS from Dell. You can even buy servers with your own disk image loaded from Dell.

      So why in the name of all the Gods are you buying servers with Windows from Dell, just to wipe it off???

      Install Linux on a Dell server, dd the drive to another one and give the drive to Dell. It is not difficult.

    • Yes, that may be, but what you're missing is that you still count towards Microsoft's share of the market. "Why?" You may ask ... well, it's because Microsoft still gets a sale of Windows for every system you buy. So the count is still "accurate" even though it isn't counting the number of systems in use. It's counting the number of sales. Microsoft still gets your money.

  • This is a good thing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Businesses tend to be risk adverse, which is generally a good thing. This means also that they are afraid of change. So this slows down Linux quite a bit.

    Home users tend to stick with what they use at work. So until Linux takes over on the corporate workstation, it will be a slow tough fight.

    All that being said, I think that Linux will kill windows. It will just be a slow process until a certain market share is reached. At this point application compatibility will be less of an issue. But progress is

  • What about support costs (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Vulcann ( 752521 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @04:23AM (#11016006)
    ZDNet is reporting that sales of servers using Linux will reach a whopping $9.1 billion by 2008...

    Considering Linux (and OSS in general) makes money via support offerings, shouldnt this be added to the overall $$$ amount ? Does 9.1. billion include support charges or simply the cost of hardware ?

    Another thing I routinely keep hearing about is that hardware is going to keep become VERY cheap (as a matter of fact there were some articles suggesting it might even become free in the long term). If one cant sell hardware, and cant sell the OS, where the hell does 9.1 billion come from ? "Voluntary donation" ??
    • I don't think that server grade hardware is going to be available free of charge anytime soon. Maybe you will get a pc for free like you get a cellphone for free if you sign a service contract. But don't forget: That isn't really free, the costs are hidden. And stay the hell away with cheap crap like that from my serverroom :)
  • Linux conquering the desktop? Any year now.

    (sorry, couldn't resist. It was this or a Beowulf cluster remark...)

  • ObSol10 (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Corporate purchasing has as much to do with IT directors furthering their careers by riding the trends than pure economics. With constantly increasing bangs per buck you can always do what you did 3 years ago for a fraction of the cost, but no-one gets that corporate promotion by doing the same thing as the last IT manager did. You've got to rip out UNIX and replace it with NT, showing the millions you saved ('96 to '00) or rip out proprietry UNIX and replace it with Linux ('01-'05?). People may see thro
  • I think it's good to keep an eye on the horizon and all, but this is still 2004. That's quite a way off when you think about it... a lot can change; a lot can go on between now and then. As much as I'd like to say "Hoo-yeah! My team's gonna win!" I think it's just too early to say.
  • I work in a shop that is mixed windows and linux but just a few linux boxes are doing all of the heavy lifting. We keep adding processing to these couple of linux boxes until they absolutely beg for mercy. On the other hand we have a ton of windows boxes that mostly sit idle because the OS is not partitioned enough to handle that type of load and still be reliable.

    So 25% means in most cases at least 50% of the data center processing will be linux.

  • How much are IBM-built servers, though. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MtViewGuy ( 197597 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2004 @09:11AM (#11017410)
    I think a good portion of the growth of Linux has been due to IBM's very successful push to get users to run Linux on IBM's big iron AS/400 and S/390 machines for large-scale computing needs.

    Mind you, I think that's a good thing because IBM gets to sell and/or lease out a lot more hardware in the long run. :-)
  • I see no way they could accurately predict linux growth over the next five years. I suppose all they are doing is measuring the last five years growth, and basing their future predictions on that.

    This reminds of 1999 market analysts predicting that the Nasdaq was going to hit 10000 by 2004.

    I am not trying to assert that linux growth will be either faster, or slower, than this study predicts, I just don't see how these sorts of studies can be meaningful.

  • Back in 1999, IDC had a study that said that Linux would account for about 3-4% of all the web servers by 2004 and that Linux would never make it in the business space.

    IDC's studies will ALWAYS go to where their money os coming from, not to where the money is going to.
  • If i'm not mistaken, BillG predicted that the cost of hardware can be neglected to that of software in the future. I assume he meant Microsoft software. Again $9.1 billion in sales of AMD/Intel based server hardware is not, what i would call, a neglectable deal! :)

    Robert

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