Server Marketshare from Enck and Claunch at Gartner

At the Gartner Conference, John Enck and Carl Claunch (both Gartner analysts) presented some interesting trends in server operating systems. Based on worldwide server shipment revenue, two operating systems are growing in marketshare:

• Windows: $19 billion in 2007
• Linux: $8.6 billion

UNIX marketshare is declining, but was still $16 billion in 2007. The total server shipment revenue in 2007 was $54 billion. Among mainframes, IBM z-Series is growing, while other vendors are decreasing.

Based on a poll of the audience (~300 members),

• 40% were reducing the number of server operating systems at their enterprise.
• 19% were increasing
• 41% were remaining steady

Based on another audience poll for use of blade architectures in the data center:

• 13% are researching blades
• 13% are testing blades
• 54% have deployed blades
• 20% have no plans for blades
  

Some other interesting highlights from this presentation:

• Itanium is viable for only the HP-UX platform but not for other operating systems.
• 80% of all x86 servers deployed in data centers run Windows.
• Solaris, AIX and HP-UX are stable UNIX platforms. Other UNIX platforms are dying.
• Gartner sees a resurgence of physical appliances. Appliances must integrate with existing monitoring and management tools.