Microsoft Gains Ground On Open-Source Apache Web Server
Netcraft's August 2007 survey of about 128 million Web sites shows a decline in market share for Apache to 48.4%, while Microsoft has risen to a 36.2% share of active Web sites.
By J. Nicholas Hoover InformationWeek
Apache has long held a tight grip on the Web server market as one of the only true redoubts of open source software. But that hold is loosening, according to surveys by research firm and Internet services company Netcraft.
Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) has been creeping up on Apache HTTP Server for the last 16 months or so, and the August survey shows the narrowest margin yet. "Microsoft's recent gains raise the prospect that Windows may soon challenge Apache's leadership position," a post on Netcraft's Web site says. "If Microsoft continues to gain share at its current pace, it could close the gap on Apache sometime in 2008."
Netcraft's August 2007 survey of about 128 million Web sites shows a decline for Apache from 69.7% of active sites on the Internet in June 2005 to 48.4% today, the first time its share has been this low in nine years. Microsoft, meanwhile, has risen in the last 16 months to a 36.2% share of active Web sites. As recently as November 2005, the gap between the two servers in overall sites on the Web -- active or not -- was as wide as 50%.
Notably, Apache's losses have been compounded by gains from Google, which uses its own Google-flavored Web server for its own sites, and open source server lighttpd, which now make up a total 5.6% of the Web server market. Google switched its Blogger sites from Apache to its specialized Google Front End server earlier this year, according to Netcraft.
Regardless, Microsoft has been steadily on the rise since Go Daddy migrated more than 3.5 million sites from Linux to Microsoft in April 2006. Among potential reasons for Microsoft's increases are increasingly better security, which had been a problem point for IIS in the past, and Microsoft's developer prowess with technologies like .Net. IIS 6.0, which debuted in 2003, has seen only three reported vulnerabilities, significantly less than the 13 Apache has seen since 2005 alone.
Microsoft is including a new version -- IIS7 -- with Windows Server 2008, which will be released by the end of the year to server hardware manufacturers. Microsoft's own site is already running on the new software, and Microsoft has released a "Go Live" license for the most recent test release, meaning that IIS7 is ready enough to run live Web sites with Microsoft support.
IIS7 includes a modular architecture that breaks the server down into pieces for HTTP, others for security and compression, and so on. It also includes performance, manageability, and diagnostics upgrades. Microsoft recently announced that IIS7 will be one of the "server core" options for Windows Server 2008, meaning that those hoping to use a Windows Server box exclusively as a Web server can do so without having to install the full version of Windows Server. In an interview this year, Microsoft developer division general manager Scott Guthrie, who oversees IIS, called IIS7 "the most significant release of the Web server we've ever done."
Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Microsoft's BizTalk Services: ESB in the Cloud
Microsoft's BizTalk Services: ESB in the Cloud
Microsoft cooks up an online enterprise service bus with BizTalk Services
by Chris Kanaracus
Steven Martin, Microsoft's director of product management in the Connected Systems Division, says the company's recently launched BizTalk Services initiative is Redmond's "best-kept secret."
The ultimate goal of the effort is an Internet Service Bus (ISB): something that mimics the functionality and role of an enterprise service bus (ESB), such as BizTalk Server, except up on a hosted server instead of behind corporate firewalls.
"If we can take a concept like an ESB and make it work at Internet scope -- meaning firewall-friendly messaging, building an app that assumes that the app lives in multiple DNSes, assumes that identity could be inside or outside the firewall -- we can drive a lot of benefit for users," he says.
To hear Martin talk, Microsoft's work on BizTalk Services was inevitable: "One of our axioms here is, any time in history where the Internet has met the enterprise, the Internet always wins. Always."
The Start of ServicesBizTalk Services is based on Windows Communication Foundation, the Web services stack that is part of the .NET Framework 3.0. So far, Microsoft has released a software development kit and a pair of services, which are available at labs.biztalk.net.
While developers would use the BizTalk Identity Service for dealing with access and identity issues, the BizTalk Connectivity Service is meant for composing composite apps. It provides a secure method of exposing a firewall-protected service and a globally addressable namespace for services, according to Microsoft. The company is also working on a Workflow Service based on Windows Workflow Foundation.
Martin stresses that BizTalk's Web standards-based underpinnings make it viable within heterogeneous environments. "These are services that we're making available in the cloud for developers to build on that are completely agnostic to what their on-premise technology is," he says. "If I'm building a WebSphere app, I can use BizTalk Services for inter-organizational messaging just as well as I could if I was using a .NET stack internally," he says.
Preparing for Prime TimeSo what type of scenarios might BizTalk Services enable? A Microsoft white paper for BizTalk Services describes a hypothetical school Web site that involves interaction with parents and is hosted on an internal server.
The school may use the site to provide various notifications to parents about school events. However, this means the intended recipients of this information must have access to a Web browser, the paper notes. Through the BizTalk ISB, the school could reach these individuals more quickly and in a customized manner, Microsoft argues in the white paper: "For example, when school is closed due to weather, a workflow kicks off. As part of that workflow, the system can notify parents, teachers, and bus drivers, as well as food service vendors, snow plow operators, and local police, using the ISB to traverse networks across these disparate organizations."
Microsoft has one eye on Google as it prepares BizTalk Services for prime time, according to Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) consultancy. "I think Microsoft is really rethinking a lot of their server infrastructure because Google is a competitive threat," Schmelzer says. Schmelzer says he expects mostly .NET-oriented enterprises and smaller companies will gravitate toward BizTalk Services for building service-oriented apps that straddle departments and divisions. "They may find the BizTalk services are lower-cost and easier to try than developing their own service," he says. "They're appealing to folks who can't make the investment in infrastructure."
Microsoft cooks up an online enterprise service bus with BizTalk Services
by Chris Kanaracus
Steven Martin, Microsoft's director of product management in the Connected Systems Division, says the company's recently launched BizTalk Services initiative is Redmond's "best-kept secret."
The ultimate goal of the effort is an Internet Service Bus (ISB): something that mimics the functionality and role of an enterprise service bus (ESB), such as BizTalk Server, except up on a hosted server instead of behind corporate firewalls.
"If we can take a concept like an ESB and make it work at Internet scope -- meaning firewall-friendly messaging, building an app that assumes that the app lives in multiple DNSes, assumes that identity could be inside or outside the firewall -- we can drive a lot of benefit for users," he says.
To hear Martin talk, Microsoft's work on BizTalk Services was inevitable: "One of our axioms here is, any time in history where the Internet has met the enterprise, the Internet always wins. Always."
The Start of ServicesBizTalk Services is based on Windows Communication Foundation, the Web services stack that is part of the .NET Framework 3.0. So far, Microsoft has released a software development kit and a pair of services, which are available at labs.biztalk.net.
While developers would use the BizTalk Identity Service for dealing with access and identity issues, the BizTalk Connectivity Service is meant for composing composite apps. It provides a secure method of exposing a firewall-protected service and a globally addressable namespace for services, according to Microsoft. The company is also working on a Workflow Service based on Windows Workflow Foundation.
Martin stresses that BizTalk's Web standards-based underpinnings make it viable within heterogeneous environments. "These are services that we're making available in the cloud for developers to build on that are completely agnostic to what their on-premise technology is," he says. "If I'm building a WebSphere app, I can use BizTalk Services for inter-organizational messaging just as well as I could if I was using a .NET stack internally," he says.
Preparing for Prime TimeSo what type of scenarios might BizTalk Services enable? A Microsoft white paper for BizTalk Services describes a hypothetical school Web site that involves interaction with parents and is hosted on an internal server.
The school may use the site to provide various notifications to parents about school events. However, this means the intended recipients of this information must have access to a Web browser, the paper notes. Through the BizTalk ISB, the school could reach these individuals more quickly and in a customized manner, Microsoft argues in the white paper: "For example, when school is closed due to weather, a workflow kicks off. As part of that workflow, the system can notify parents, teachers, and bus drivers, as well as food service vendors, snow plow operators, and local police, using the ISB to traverse networks across these disparate organizations."
Microsoft has one eye on Google as it prepares BizTalk Services for prime time, according to Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) consultancy. "I think Microsoft is really rethinking a lot of their server infrastructure because Google is a competitive threat," Schmelzer says. Schmelzer says he expects mostly .NET-oriented enterprises and smaller companies will gravitate toward BizTalk Services for building service-oriented apps that straddle departments and divisions. "They may find the BizTalk services are lower-cost and easier to try than developing their own service," he says. "They're appealing to folks who can't make the investment in infrastructure."
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