A story from www.theregister.co.uk:
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/19662.html)
No one's using Linux, claims Microsoft
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 13/06/2001 at 11:21 GMT
Gartner Dataquest has pegged the proportion of Linux servers
shipped in the United States at 8.6 per cent.
Gartner analyst Jeffery Hewitt claims that this figure - which
includes
'white box' shipments, but excludes server appliances such as Sun's
Cobalt range - is dramatically lower than the 20 per cent plus
cited
by arch rivals IDC. Of that 8.6 per cent, eight per cent is
attributed to
Red Hat and 0.6 per cent to other distros.
The survey is dated May 30, but was made public yesterday.
We don't usually hear about analyst surveys from vendors in advance
of publication. But yesterday a note dropped in from Microsoft's PR
company, Waggener Edstrom.
"8.6 per cent is... certainly in line with what we are hearing
from our
customers and partners," wrote a friendly Wagg-Ed flak.
Now there's some dispute over what a 'shipment' actually involves,
as NewsForge's Rob 'roblimo' Miller points out in this analysis.
And
he has a very good point: for example, Gartner pegs Linux
shipments in the supercomputer space as 'zero' this year. In fact
Linux is well established on commodity parallel clusters at many
scientific sites. Many of these were assembled in-house, so a
shipment clearly doesn't correlate to a working installation.
However, Microsoft's pre-emptive strike may be tactical. Hewitt
actually predicts that volume shipments of Linux - even using
Gartner's contested definition of 'shipment' and 'server' - will
mushroom in the next four years.
Total worldwide Linux deployment will quadruple from 2.4 million to
9.1 million, predicts Gartner, with explosive growth in the
supercomputer area: up from that dubious 'zero' this year to over
5000 by 2005. In the $25,000 to $100,000 range - the low-end
company workhorse - Linux shipments will increase ninefold. In the
sub-$5000 space, Linux will grow over six fold.
So this may be a case of the Beast getting its retaliation in
first.
Might be interesting to know :-)
Paul
