By Timothy Prickett Morgan
According to statistics culled from surveys of US computer installations performed by ZD Intelligence, Compaq Computer Corp has rather dramatically knocked Sun Microsystems Inc out as the top peddler of corporate Web server platforms.
In August 1997, surveys of the corporate installed base showed that Sun has about 26% of the market, with Compaq holding about 22% share. IBM had about 10%, and Dell Computer Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co had about 8% of installations. The remaining 28% of the market was split up among myriad other vendors who ported Web servers to their Unix and proprietary servers as well as other vendors of NT-based PC servers. By December 1997, Compaq and Sun, says ZD Intelligence, were neck and neck at 24% market share (even as the number of Web servers installed exploded) and they were still jockeying for position in March 1998. But about a year ago, Compaq started increasing its share little by little as Sun Microsystem’s started to dwindle.
The shares of IBM. HP and Dell stayed more or less the same in the corporate Web server market until December 1998, when HP’s share jumped to 15%, almost matching Sun, and by April 1998, IBM’s has jumped up to just under HP with about 13% share. Dell is still languishing at under 10% share. As ZD Intelligence analyst Aaron Goldberg puts it, it is really a three horse race for the number two slot, and it would be unwise to count Dell out given its impressive PC server growth.
What Goldberg doesn’t say that Sun’s decline is probably not due to customers unplugging Sparc boxes to replace them with PC servers, but rather an expansion of the market that is driven by the popularity of NT and its Internet Information Server. Odds are, Sun’s unit shipments are still growing as corporate Web server platforms. It is just that shipments of PC servers, which are expected to hit 3 million this year, utterly dwarf any Unix vendors shipments. As more small and medium businesses go to the Web, it only makes sense that most of them will follow the same path taken by lots of ISPs and ASPs, who are moving to Windows NT in droves.
Plenty of ISPs and ASPs have outgrown Linux and Windows NT when it comes to Web serving, however, so there is still a place for high-end, time-tested Unix servers in supporting Web servers and the e-business applications that depend on them. Sun, says Goldberg, has the highest average selling prices for Web server platforms, so it can still make a good living off decreasing market share. But there’s no question that Sun would like to have dominant market and revenue share in the corporate market as it does out there among ISPs and within the Internet backbone.
