Microsoft Makes Share Gains with Windows on Servers

by Dan Burger

In 2001, Microsoft came within a whisker of commandeering one half all server operating systems shipped. According to market researchers International Data Corp, Microsoft continued to pull away from competitors based on 2001 sales, which show Windows NT and Windows 2000 accounting for 49 percent of all server operating systems shipped that year. IDC's report on year 2000 sales showed Microsoft with 42 percent of the market.

Microsoft's gain in revenues, unit shipments, and market share for both its server and client operating systems is largely attributable to the upgrade cycle for Windows 2000 as Windows NT fades into the history books. However, as Al Gillen, director for IDC's system software research team, pointed out, part of the increase can be attributed to Microsoft's much-maligned changes in software licensing terms and customer transitions from older Microsoft technologies to current middleware and application products, which often require a move to Windows 2000.

To give this a larger perspective, Gillen noted that Microsoft in 1996 was in the low 20 percent range of market share. Back then, NetWare had more shipments than Windows, and the collective Unix platforms--Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Tru64, UnixWare, and a few others--had a larger portion of the new license shipment total compared to Windows, too.

Microsoft has more than doubled its server operating environment market share from 1996 to 2001, which is a pretty mean feat.

"Microsoft has taken market share away from all the vendors who used to own this market," Gillen said. "The market size grew significantly from 1996 to 2001, and Microsoft absorbed most of that new growth in the server operating environment market."

The IDC report indicated the overall operating system market, combining clients and servers, increased 0.7 percent from 2000 to 2001, with the client side growing 3.8 percent and the server side declining by slightly less than one percent. Microsoft built its share of client OSes on the desktop from 92 to 93 percent during this same timeframe.

In addition to Microsoft's commanding share of the 5.7 million new server operating system licenses shipped in 2001, Linux achieved an impressive 25.7 percent of shipments, NetWare accounted for 11.7 percent, and all Unixes together represented 11.6 percent of shipments. Other server operating systems fought over a scant two percent of the remaining shipments.

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