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ATOMGood news for Linux servers and IBM system z mainframes
Added by The Editor, 3 months ago.
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The latest quarterly server sales figures from market research company IDC reveal healthy growth for Linux servers and IBM mainframes.
Analysts at the company estimate that, in the three months ending 31 March 2008, revenue from sales of Linux servers grew 8.4 per cent over the corresponding 2007 period, to $1.8 billion. As a result, Linux-based servers now represent 13.7% of all server revenue, compared with market shares of 39.2 per cent for Windows-based servers and 30.6 per cent for Unix-based servers.
That growth can be attributed, at least in part, to the changing nature of Linux workloads, according to analyst Al Gilllen. "Increasingly, deployments of the Linux server operating system are expanding from infrastructure-oriented workloads to more commercially-oriented workloads such as database, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and other general business processing, workloads that historically have been the domain of Microsoft Windows and Unix," he recently said.
"Where once Linux was seen by customers primarily as a low-cost infrastructure solution, it is now increasingly viewed as a solution for wider and more critical business deployments."
Another big winner in IDC's server sales report for the quarter was IBM with its System z mainframes running the z/OS operating system. The platform returned to positive revenue growth in 1Q08, with 10.4% year-over-year growth to $1.1 billion. IBM z/OS servers accounted for 8.4% of all server revenue in 1Q08, the highest first quarter revenue for IBM's System z systems in 3 years.
"IBM benefited from the growth in System z revenue as customers embraced the introduction of the new z10 family," said Steve Josselyn, research director for enterprise platforms at IDC. "After declines throughout the second half of last year, investment in the System z family returns at a time when large capital expenditures were expected to decline as a result of weak economic conditions."
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Victoria, 2 months ago
When Linux began to be used by governments around the world, its position in the server market was cemented, in my view. But it's particularly interesting to hear that Linux environments are being used more for commercially-oriented workloads, and I'd be curious to find out how much the vendor sales pitch has altered to focus less on the efficiency savings associated with Linux and more on the overall effectiveness of Linux as a server platform.