Apache advanced on its predominance in Netcraft's monthly Web Server Survey (August), gaining 5.89% among Top Developers to finish with a 63.51% share. Microsoft (mostly IIS) dropped 6.48% to 25.39. Among Active Sites, Apache hit almost exactly the 2/3 mark, with 66.64%, while Microsoft dropped almost to the 1/4 mark, with 24.68%.
Netcraft attributed the change to continued shifts at Register.com between Microsoft and Linux front ends, and the clearing of over a million sites by Homestead.com. Since May, Register.com has shifted host server OSes and Web servers (back and forth between Linux /Apache and Windows 2000/Microsoft-iiS/5.0) eight times. And Homestead is shifting from an advertising business model to a fee for services model. Customers for the million+ departed sites were apparently unwiling to pay. Meanwhile, an investigation by the FTC of a marketing relationship between Verisign and Interland will probably not help Microsoft-IIS shares, since Interland is a large Micosoft-based repository of parked sites.
Of eight hosting companies with the fastest increases in responding IP addresses, Netcraft's "What's that server running" facility shows four (Cybercon, Dialtoninternet, He.net and Rackspace) running their own domain on Linux. The other four run on Microsoft. Most of these companies, however, offer customers a choice of Linux/Apache and Microsoft-IIS servers. For example, Rackshack.net, whose own domain is hosted on Microsoft, promotes two hosting deals: one for $99/mo (60GB HD, 400GB monthly transfer) and the other for $119/mo., both running "Plain Red Hat 7.2, Ensim or Plesk." The word "Microsoft" does not appear on the company's home page.
Netcraft also reports brutal competition among Linux hardware vendors:
Also, noteworthy from Sun's perspective, is that few of the companies continue to offer Cobalt, which was not long ago a defacto standard in the dedicated server industry. Hosters now prefer servers from IBM, Compaq, or no name boxes, with third party control panels. Notably, Rackshack dropped Cobalt near the start of the year, not long after placing the largest ever order for Cobalt servers in December.
The Netcraft Survey is at <http://www.netcraft.com/survey/>.
- Doc Searls