madmatt

The Internet experienced its strongest site growth ever last month, powered by a surge in blogs and free web sites. In the June 2006 survey we received responses from 85,541,228 sites, a gain of 3.96 million sites from the May report. This is the largest one-month increase in sites in the history of the Netcraft survey, surpassing a gain of 3.3 million in March 2003, although the 2003 gain was larger in percentage terms (8.5%, compared to 4.7% this month).

Microsoft continues to gain share in the web server market, chipping away at Apache's commanding lead. The number of hostnames on Windows servers grew by 4.5 million, giving Microsoft 29.7% market share, a gain of 4.25% for the month. Apache had a decline of 429K hostnames, and loses 3.5% to 61.25%.

Apache's lead over Microsoft, which stood at 48.2% in March, has been narrowed to 31.5%, a shift of 16.7% in just three months.

Source: Netcraft

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SPeedY_B

I have to ask... why? What does IIS offer (Other than ease-of-use .asp) that Apache doesn't, which would make people actively switch over?

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NetRyder

Yeah, it's interesting. A 16.7% shift is pretty significant.

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madmatt

Update

Microsoft said Thursday that third-party data indicates the Windows server platform continues to grow at the expense of Apache and Linux. According to Web hosting research company Netcraft, Windows hostnames grew by 4.5 million, while Apache/Linux lost 429,000.

Percentage-wise, that equals a 29.7 percent market share for Windows, and a gain of 4.25 percent for the month. Meanwhile, Apache/Linux fell 3.5 percent to 61.25 percent in May. Furthermore, Web sites based on Windows Server 2003 have seen a 176 percent growth since April of last year, according to Microsoft research.

John Zanni, Microsoft's director of shared hosting market development, told BetaNews in an interview that the gains could be attributed to several factors. First off, the company is offering versions of both SQL Server and Visual Studio for free.

Second, Microsoft is making improvements to its core server products, which in turn is making the company's software more attractive as a Web platform. "We're working with providers to create richer offerings," he said.

Zanni says the success can also be attributed to a change in Microsoft's business strategy. Nearly a decade after ASP first hit the market, the concept of software as a service is finally catching on with Web developers.

"People are looking for richer functionality than in the past," he says, explaining that is one of Microsoft's strengths. Thus it has resulted in a migration by some developers to the Redmond company's technologies, and also is shown in the 46 percent increase in ASP.NET sites since July of last year.

Also, Microsoft's sheer size assists it in being more mobile than Linux in addressing customer needs. Zanni said the company has its entire product line at its disposal, which allows it to look for new ways for products to work within the software as a service model, giving it an advantage.

When asked what the company's goals were for share of the market, Zanni responded that increased market share was not necessarily the target of Microsoft's moves in the space. "Our goal is to enable people to be successful using software as a service," he added. "Our rising share shows that."

Source: BetaNews

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Xie

I've read that one of the HUGE factors that caused these numbers is the domain registar GoDaddy has switch it's "parked" domains to IIS. I don't think it has anything to do with IIS getting better or what MS tells the media.

Oh and since Apache still has more then double the market share I don't see why they have need to worry yet.

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Shamus MacNoob

Not sure if anything like this should worry anyone about anything, not like it would change anything on the face of the Planet.

SPeedY_B

Read the same thing. It's quite a problem when domains are on different servers to their data, etc. My domain used to be hosted on an IIS server, pointed at a Red Hat box running Apache.

Good ol' stats. Never accurate

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