The January 2001 Netcraft Web Server Survey is out;

      http://www.netcraft.com/survey/

Top Developers

                                                             
         Developer December 2000  Percent January 2001  Percent Change         
         Apache          15414726   60.04      16207982   58.75  -1.29         
         Microsoft        5027023   19.58       5903512   21.40   1.82         
         iPlanet          1722228    6.71       1772154    6.42  -0.29         

Top Servers

                                                                
           Server        December 2000 Percent January 2001 Percent Change     
     Apache                   15414726   60.04     16207982   58.75  -1.29     
     Microsoft-IIS             5025017   19.57      5901507   21.39   1.82     
     Netscape-Enterprise       1682737    6.55      1733097    6.28  -0.27     
     WebLogic                   890791    3.47      1004571    3.64   0.17     
     Zeus                       676526    2.63       693684    2.51  -0.12     
     Rapidsite                  365807    1.42       371441    1.35  -0.07     
     thttpd                     321944    1.25       343172    1.24  -0.01     
     tigershark                 139300    0.54       150937    0.55   0.01     
     AOLserver                  125513    0.49       127980    0.46  -0.03     
     WebSitePro                 110681    0.43       113480    0.41  -0.02   

Around the Net

Arguably, Microsoft's applications have made the difference, with there being no straightforward alternative to Microsoft's Commerce Server in the Unix world. [3]Intershop has been the most likely alternative, particularly in Europe, but the company's financial [4]performance has suggested that market share has been bought rather than earned.

Also making notable progress is the scripting language [5]PHP. Earlier this month [6]Zend announced the availability of the first commercial products to support use of PHP, including significant performance improvements through script caching. The PHP module is compiled into the Apache server on over 5 million web sites, or approaching a third of all Apache sites. Although PHP will only be in use on a fraction of these sites currently, it is regarded as easier to program than perl or jsp, and has created a broad developer community in a relatively short space of time. PHP, together with MySQL and Apache, has become the de facto way of developing web applications in the Linux environment, in a similar way to the IIS/ASP/SQL-Server combination in the Microsoft world.

Linuxworld is proceeding at time of writing, and significant early announcements include Silicon Graphics [7]appointing Paul McNamara, previously VP of Business Development at Red Hat as VP responsible for Opensource. IRIX's share of the web has been in decline since Netcraft first developed operating systems detection, and SGI may now feel that they have little to lose by a wholehearted endorsement of Linux. SGI has more revenues than the Linux industry companies put together, and if it can sustain its customers attention, it could make the transition to a Linux platform more readily than HP or IBM, which have significant value in their own proprietary platforms.

Also notable was the first address given at Linuxworld by a senior Microsoft employee, Doug Miller. Early [8]reports have contrasted Miller's presentation with [9]remarks made by Steve Ballmer, where the Microsoft CEO rated Linux the number one threat to Microsoft, in front of Sun and Oracle. Miller highlighted relative disadvantages of the Linux and free software environment, including the difficulty of finding a sustainable business model, which many in the free software community would agree with.

However this debate still has a long way to run, with the same community quickly responding to charges that Linux has a long way to go to solve business problems that large companies face, by pointing out that in the wake of its own DNS [10]outages Microsoft itself has moved some of its key DNS servers to Linux by [11]outsourcing this to [12]Akamai.

  1. http://www.softaware.com/
  2. http://www.netcraft.com/ssl/
  3. http://www.intershop.com/
  4.
http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT3QHHYRMIC&live=tr
ue&useoverridetemplate=ZZZ3XDHE90C&tagid=ZZZA31PK20C
  5. http://www.php.net/
  6. http://www.zend.com/news/pr.php?id=18
  7. http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2001/january/mcnamara.html
  8. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,41527,00.html
  9. http://www.microsoft.com/msft/speech/BallmerMSDW01.htm
 10. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,41454,00.html
 11. http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois?STRING=microsoft.com
 12. http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.akamai.com

Complete Story

Related Stories:
PHP Reaches New Milestone(Jan 10, 2001)
December 2000 Security Space Survey Results(Jan 03, 2001)
The December 2000 Netcraft Web Server Survey is out: Apache gains; IIS/PWS slips(Jan 01, 2001)
November 2000 Security Space Survey Results(Dec 04, 2000)
The November Netcraft Web Server Survey is Out(Dec 01, 2000)
October 2000 Security Space Survey Results(Nov 04, 2000)
Editor's Note: Serving the Political Web(Nov 02, 2000)
The October Netcraft Web Server Survey is Out: Apache Still Rules(Nov 01, 2000)
The September 2000 Netcraft Web Server Survey is out!(Oct 01, 2000)