The server market share battle: Microsoft gains 2%

Looking at the Gartner and IDC quarterly server numbers this morning I couldn’t help but think that the sky isn’t falling, but a cloud or two may have. What’s going on with Linux servers these days?!

According to Gartner, Microsoft was up 2%, bringing its total market share to 67.1% of servers shipped during Q2 2007. Of the 2.06 million servers shipped in Q2, about 1.4 million were supplied with Windows. Linux, on the other hand, accounted for 22.8% of server shipments. That was a decrease of from the 23.1% share the OS held at this time in 2006.

Framingham, Mass.-based IDC, which also releases a quarterly server tracking report that’s just positively HUGE with media types like myself, found that Windows worldwide server revenue grew 18.7% to $5 billion in the Q2.

As for revenue, Windows gained 4 percentage points in that area for a total of 38.2% of all server revenue for Q2 2007. Linux-based server revenue, by comparison, comprised $1.8 billion for the quarter, and 19% growth year over year. Linux servers represent 13.6% of all server revenue.

So Linux grew, but Windows did too. There are indications that the growth for Windows could be short lived as server virtualization takes even more of a hold than it has now, but that still remains to be seen.