Microsoft SA has taken issue with a report by local research house BMI-TechKnowledge which concluded that Windows server software sales are decreasing and losing ground to the Unix and Linux operating systems (OS).
The report by BMI-T senior analyst Chantal Mann was released in June and stated that Unix server sales had increased by more than 13% in 2001, while Windows NT and 2000 declined.
Desmond Nair, Microsoft product marketing manager, disputes the figures and says the conclusion was based on a flawed assumption. "We have come to the conclusion that the numbers quoted for NT/2000 were in fact understated as they only included server operating systems shipped with server hardware."
Nair says that in the desktop and consumer space, the number of PCs shipped with Windows is a fair reflection of the number of OS sales. But in the server market, he says, the same metric is not true and the report "assumed the same reasoning for the server market".
He says that in the server space, companies usually purchase server software as part of volume licensing agreements or as full purchase products. Typically, server customers buy software and hardware independently from one another, unlike in the desktop market.
"There may actually have been a decline in the number of customers asking for Windows when buying a server," says Nair, but this is not a reliable indicator that sales in this area are on the decline.
Nair says the company has in fact seen year-on-year growth of 30% in Windows server sales "which should definitely put Windows Server as the leading server OS in terms of revenue".
Mann says, however, that the figures are not wholly wrong and that the evidence still points to a decline in the Windows server market. "These are the numbers vendors are giving us, and we also make sure to ask vendors what operating system is going onto the machine," even if the server is sold without an operating system.
"Our numbers still show a depreciation for Windows," says Mann.
She also points to the growth in high-end servers, many of which are unlikely to be running Microsoft server products and can reliably be assumed to be running other operating systems. "Anyone who buys a Sun server will run Solaris," she says by way of example.
Mann says the next server quarterly from BMI-T will be released later this month.
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