Linux doing well as Japanese server OS
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into server operating systems in small and medium-sized businesses. On the 10th of March 330 people employed in companies with less than 100 people, working in management, board-level, sales, technical or other specialist positions completed the survey. It may be worth comparing the results here with a previous survey on desktop operating systems.
Demographics
86.4% of the sample was male, 5.2% in their twenties, 39.1% in their thirties, 41.8% in their forties, 8.8% in their fifties, and 5.2% in their sixties.
Being in a large company, I don’t count for this survey, although our intranet seems to be powered by some sort of Linux-based system, I suspect. Within each team, however, file servers tend to be Windows; no-one is terribly interested in setting up anything more advanced, and in fact… ahh, perhaps I might get into company confidential information, so I’d better stop now.
Survey results
Q1: Do you have a server at your place of work? (Sample size=330)
Yes (to SQs) 65.5% No 27.3% Don’t know 7.3% Q1SQ: What operating systems do the servers (web server, application server, database server included) at your place of work use? (Sample size=216)
Votes Percentage Windows 2000 83 38.4% Windows 2003 54 25.0% Windows NT 40 18.5% Linux 36 16.7% UNIX 13 6.0% Mainframe OS 5 2.3% Don’t know 53 24.5% Other 6 2.8% These 216 people were then asked about upgrade plans; 35 people (or 16.2%) said their company was investigating the situation, and of these 35, 22 said there was a definite plan to move servers within a few years. These 22 people were then asked what
Q1SQ2: From what operating system to what operating system do you plan to move to? (Sample size=22)
Votes Percentage Upgrade to newer Windows version 15 68.2% Upgrade to newer Linux version 2 9.1% From Windows to Linux 1 4.5% From mainframe to Windows 0 0.0% From mainframe to Linux 0 0.0% From UNIX to Windows 0 0.0% From UNIX to Linux 0 0.0% Upgrade to newer UNIX version 0 0.0% Don’t know 3 13.6% Other 2 9.1%
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What do you mean, Linux is doing well at 16.7% on the server?
In a Linux Foundation survey, which I assume is US-centric, Linux has a small business server market share of 40%!
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Market-Share-Windows-57-5-Linux-40-6-an-Open-Source-Dream-Come-True-74272.shtml
In Japan, businesses prefer to buy from a big brand name. It’s a question of trust, getting support and having someone responsible when there is a problem. There are a lot less homegrown IT solutions based on Linux around, and a big difficulty for smaller Linux vendors is to build a brand name that can match Microsoft.
That doesn’t mean Linux is not successful in Japan (otherwise I would not have the job I have), but calling this market share “successful” masks the fact that it is twice that much in other parts of the world.