This is the sort of English up with which I shall not put - Winston Churchill
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Microsoft sees IIS market share plummet to 1997 levels
SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Microsoft has seen the market share of its IIS webserver drop back to 1997 levels.
Microsoft's IIS webserver is the second most widely used webserver daemon after Apache. While it never occupied the top spot, at one point in 2007 it was starting to get close to Apache's hugely popular webserver software. However since 2008, its market share plummeted and while it still manages to hold onto second place, there's the best part of 50 percentage points difference between Apache and Microsoft's IIS and the Vole's IIS apparently is back to the level of market share that it saw in 1997.
Apache's HTTPD webserver is popular for two reasons. It runs on just about every operating system out there, and it can be implemented in other products such as Oracle's own application server products. Microsoft's IIS, on the other hand, is closed source and runs only on Windows, so it's no surprise that it lags behind Apache's more robust and flexible sofware offering.
Although in absolute terms the number of websites running on Microsoft's IIS is greater than it was in 1997, the fact that its overall market share has dropped will not be very pleasing for Microsoft.
Web server deployment is fairly easy to register, as many websites present a tag that shows off the server type. Although it is by no means conclusive, this falling Microsoft IIS market share might be construed as a more general decline in Microsoft's server operating system market share.
The only positive - if you can call it that - for Microsoft is that the figures don't reveal whether IIS is the problem or the Windows operating system. Given that the Vole bundles IIS for free in Windows, Microsoft will be hoping it is the former, because customers turning away from Windows Server in droves might be a far more dire sign. µ
Tags: Microsoft
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Well done Steve B, you're doing a brilliant job. Please stay at the helm for another 10 or 20 years and by then you may have managed to destroy your company. Thank God for that!
It's not surprising considering you can just download Ubuntu, tell it to install a LAMP configuration and you've got a web server up and running. Back in 1997, it was an utter chore to get Linux running, and it still sucked until distributions like Ubuntu made it a snap to get something functioning without having to know the intricacies of Linux.
Apache has come a long way too. I was able to install a copy of it as a service on Windows with little trouble. It's pretty amazing too, because I always thought Apache would be limited only to the *nix world or some goofy Cygwin kind of deal, not some nice installer that conveniently operates as a service. Kudos to you Apache Software Foundation.
Windows web server is not free, but has a reasonable price tag. Therefore the cost between IIS and Apache hosting is not that significant. MS SQL on the other hand very expensive compared to MySql. That's why majority is opting LAMP.
"the Vole bundles IIS for free in Windows"
It certainly does not, any more than it bundles IE, WMP (and its licensed MP3 and SRS effects) or Works for free with Windows.
And who's going to run IIS other than someone with a server version of Windows - which costs a lot more than XP Home did or Win 7 Starter does.
End users need pretty, dumbed-down GUIs to use a computer. Techies just want to cut to the chase and pop open plain text INI files in their favourite text editor. What MS offer is a product for techies with an end-user interface. If it wasn't for management (who are closer to end users than techies) Windows wouldn't have the server market share it does now. I wonder how many techies who use Windows Server and IIS every day would prefer to use Apache if it were down to them?
Microsoft needs to get new developers excited about .net/IIS/etc. I think they've done a poor job of that.
Particularly asp.net mvc, which is almost nothing like classic asp.net. And that's a good thing. I suspect if people tried asp.net mvc they'd love it.
Apache is a decent web server though, no question. I've tried a bunch of alternatives for non .net hosting and always end up back with apache. It's stable, has lots of options, and is reasonably fast.