The May Netcraft survey is out: it’s an Apache world! Page 3

Netcraft itself will do two things to help this situation. Firstly, we will introduce an optional assurance seal for our customers such that people can show that their site is being tested on a regular basis, and the date of the last clean test. Secondly, we will introduce a tariff for a single host or ip address, such as commonly found at dedicated server companies, so that our own cost barrier to regular, frequent detailed testing is much lower. Details will appear on our site over the next two weeks, and in the interim we encourage people to mail usto request information.

Server Blades v Cobalt

Albeit released closer to June 1 than May 1, the Netcraft survey of Web servers has the Apache Web server slightly declining in market share.

RLX Technologies  launched its ServerBlade this month, which perhaps presents the most significant change in hosting technology since the introduction of the 1U server. Over the last two years Cobalt has come to lead America’s dedicated server industry, and make significant inroads into several European markets. It is conceivable that the Server Blade may change this. However there are reasons other than size why people like to run Cobalt, including the user interface and ease of administration. One anticipates that dedicated server companies will be strongly attracted to Server Blades, because of the power and space advantages, and because it is has been very hard to make a profit from providing Cobalt hosting, which, modulo network performance and availability,  is a market close to perfect competition.

However, the impact of server blades is by no means certain. The dedicated server companies’ customers may be less easy to persuade, as  they do not see the power or space issues, just the Cobalt GUI, and if customers ask for Cobalt, then that is what the dedicated server companies will have to buy.

Microsoft will have a key roll to play in determining RLX’s success, as server blades stand a good chance of being deployed when a customer asks for a Windows server, and Microsoft made an announcement of its own plans for server appliances to coincide with the RLX Launch. If Microsoft can successfully compete with Cobalt at a software level, then RLX will have the opportunity to compete at the hardware level.

Ironically, RLX’s own site, hosted at leading dedicated server company rackspace.com runs Linux and Apache.

Reports and Interactive Queries

Reports are provided showing server usage for the Internet as a whole, and for selected domains, with links to all the sites responding to the survey. A facility for you to check what server a particular site is running now is also available. The same form can be used to ensure that a particular site is included in future surveys. A directory of sites running in developer domains is also provided, while the sites discovered by the survey can be explored.

Fair Use, Copyright

Excerpts from this survey may be reproduced if Netcraft and the url http://www.netcraft.com/survey/are attributed.