A new survey of web domains shows a decline in the number of sites running Microsoft’s Internet Information Server. Not surprising, when we remember that research super-heavyweight Gartner issued a report in late 2001 suggesting users should consider alternatives given the holes it presented to the Code Red and Nimda worms. Gartner gets listened to.
Netcraft says IIS had 35% of the web server market just under a year ago, but by the end of 2002 the figure had fallen to 28%. The open source Apache server holds pride of place at 63% of sites (www.netcraft.com/survey).
But hang on, says Port80 Software, which sells IIS add-ons that make it more reliable. Apache servers are more likely to host lots of small sites, those each still count as one server in the survey.
It surveyed large companies in the Fortune 1000 and came up with quite different figures: 54% use IIS, 21% use Netscape Enterprise, just under 18% Apache and the rest use other software.
You say tomato, I say numerical advantage. Port80’s findings may well be true for the biggest sites in the US, but in New Zealand we don’t hold to convention. Telecom’s site uses Netscape-Enterprise/6.0 on Solaris, according to Netcraft’s online tool. Allied sites Xtra and XtraMSN run Netscape-Enterprise/4.1 on Solaris 8.
The NZ Herald site runs Apache, as does Stuff (on Solaris 8). TVNZ’s Nzoom is a renegade, running Zeus/4.1 on SGI’s IRIX. IDG, which publishes Computerworld, runs Lotus Domino on NT4/Windows 98. Fellow Notes site Stats NZ also uses Domino.
Microsoft, not surprisingly, locally runs Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000. The site www.govt.nz is running Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) Midgard/1.4.3-RC-2/SG PHP/4.2.2 on Linux, as are a number of government sites.
But www.tradenz.govt.nz is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000, as is Industry NZ, which will ease their impending merger, perhaps.