Topic: Is Apache About to Get Scalped ?

[Steffen]

Certainly looks like it:
Apache loses 2.8% share this month, partly through the strong growth at the major blogging systems, and partly due to 2.5 million domains on Apache expiring at trouble-free.net. Apache has around a 10% market share advantage over IIS now, which is the smallest gap between the two since IIS was launched in 1996.

The only consolation is that Apache's job is done: it has the shown the way. Today, if necessary, we can live without Apache as an example of how Microsoft can be beaten in a market, because the total open source story is now so strong.

Steffen

[tdonovan]

It's ironic that Microsoft released a FastCGI facility for IIS at about the same time that Apache broke FastCGI on Windows.

I was curious, so I gave it a try on Win2003svr with IIS6 & PHP 5.2.4. I was disappointed to see that it was about 25% faster than mod_fcgid and Apache 2.2.4 on the same system (requesting /info.php 10,000 times) and was rock solid. One weakness - it runs php-cgi OK, but it isn't clear how to configure it for user-written .fcgi programs. I asked about this in the IIS forum.

Microsoft is certainly doing everything it can to promote IIS vs. Apache, and with their huge budget it is not a surprise they are making some progress.

It's interesting that IIS seems to do better in big Fortune 500 companies than Apache, although Apache still seems to be preferred by companies which actually do business on-line.

-tom-

[Brian]

Don't forget that any business that chooses to use IIs over Apache is going to be invested in a MS Infrastructure already, most likely.

IIs has the advantages of being able to leverage many capabilities of the MS Domain and its related services. Apache is not well suited for a MS enterprise simply put, it really couldn't be unless it were going to go commercial (for practical reasons).

Regarding the speed benchmarks, anecdotally I would say that I prefer AMD processors despite the fact that they are not as fast as Intel these days. I do so because they are more than fast enough for everything I deploy today, and they will be a valued part of my network for at least the next five years. So if I can meet my needs and spend less money, I don't care if my workstations are not as fast as the current Intel models would be. My point here is that most businesses don't select IIs because CGI is faster than on Apache and nor would they choose Apache over IIs if CGI were faster on Apache.

Additionally MS is very smart to integrate the myriad of applications and services through IIs. This ranges from WSUS to Exchange and many points in between. I think those that work in an enterprise environment will acknowledge that there is not a lot of room for open source in most cases, at least that has been my experience.

For my private ventures I still choose to use Apache because I don't need the integration of MS applications. Also, despite the fact that IIs features a GUI based administrative console, I prefer the text files. This is a strength and a weakness of Apache.

Is it just me or does anyone else see the trend to continue for IIs to keep growing in its market share?

An After thought here:

If Apache were to pursue a similar course as MySQL there may be an advantage. As long as MySQL is free it will continue to be the most popular db engine on earth (as long as it is of high quality too). Keeping MySQL free is an advantage for the marketing of Entperise MySQL, so I would think. I wonder if there is a place for Enterprise Apache out there with support for business?

For some reason I keep thinking that it comes down to money...

[glsmith]

Thought I'd dig this up again for comment.

I do not know how Netcraft does it's surveys, weather they scan IPs or domain names, if the latter there may be no significant difference for some time, but there are many I assume that are going to start using Windows Home Server if for nothing else than it's backup features, when they do, there will be many IP's answering a call with the IIS signature. As those figure out they can have their own domains, then the IIS numbers could sky-rocket.

Let's face it, not every household has an Apache, but MS seems determined to get IIS into every household regardless of the security implications, not necessarily of the server itself, but a bunch of people with just enough knowledge to be dangerous to themselves.

M2C

Gregg