“Solid shipment growth in the worldwide market for server
operating environments will not translate into strong revenue
growth. According to a new report from IDC, Server Operating
Environments Market Forecast and Analysis, 2000-2004, shipments
will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of almost 17%
from 1999 to 2004. Revenues, meanwhile, will remain fairly flat
with a CAGR just over 1%.”
“Several factors will contribute to the disparity between
revenue and shipment growth in the market for server operating
environments,” said Al Gillen, manager of IDC’s Server Operating
Environments and Software research. “One major factor will be the
market’s transition to lower-priced Microsoft and Linux products.
Also, a surge of upgrades to the various server versions of Windows
2000 products will boost shipments while generating only upgrade
revenue, lowering average per-product revenue.”
“The need to support Internet and ecommerce applications as well
as traditional online transaction processing, database, file print,
and application workloads will drive demand for server operating
environments.”
“According to IDC, the big news in the server operating
environment market is the mushrooming shipments of Linux. In 1999,
Linux overtook NetWare as the number-two server operating
environment in terms of new license shipments, and Linux shipment
growth will outpace all other server operating environments through
2004. IDC forecasts Linux server operating environment
shipments will increase at a CAGR of more than 28% from 1.3 million
in 1999 to 4.7 million in 2004. Linux revenues will also grow
faster than the rest of the market, increasing at a CAGR of over
23%. However, even with this high growth, Linux server operating
environment revenues will barely exceed $85 million in 2004, and
total Linux server shipments will remain second to Microsoft’s
Windows Server product family.”