Who is still working on Windows?
Technical support service "Smart-Soft" receives approximately 700 calls (calls, requests through the form on the site, etc.) per month. Only 200 of them are directly related to Traffic Inspector, while the remaining 500 contain non-company related issues. About 70% of our work time is spent by our consultants helping customers set up a network in Windows, and today we will try to figure out whether this is good or bad.
First, let's look at where Microsoft operating systems are used, which have been leading in the number of installations for many years. According to various studies, the market share of Linux - one of the most popular alternatives to Windows - does not exceed 4% (there are also opinions that it is much less). In fact, the total number of installations says nothing. This is like the average temperature in the hospital: taking the morgue with the infectious diseases department and averaging the indicators, we get the physiological norm of 36.6 (which does not reflect the real situation).
It is necessary to take into account the different industry niches that give us a completely different picture. For example, in the supercomputer segment, Linux reigns almost completely, and the share of Windows is vanishingly small here: Doubters can get acquainted with the list of the most productive computing systems on the planet.
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If we talk about web servers, here the share of a free OS is measured in tens of percent (more precisely, you can’t say it, because the researchers publish different results). Taking a more general context, one can see a steady increase in revenue from sales of servers on Linux: according to IDC, in the fourth quarter of 2012 it exceeded 20% of the total money raised for servers. An important point: experts explain the increase in the share of Linux by the high demand for productive systems (including for the deployment of corporate cloud infrastructure).
Thus, the monopoly of Windows is provided mainly at the expense of home machines, corporate workstations, as well as servers in the SMB segment.
There is an opinion that it is much easier to master server versions of Microsoft operating systems than, say, Linux. This is not true. Solving the problems arising in complex IT infrastructure of large companies requires highly skilled administrators and there is no longer any difference with which OS they work with. For Windows, the entry threshold is lower: let's say, a small domain controller with a file server (or a gateway using Traffic Inspector) can be deployed by any employee.
And this is good, since a small company does not need to keep highly qualified specialists hung with certificates and pay them the appropriate money. Well, for consultations on non-trivial (such technical support of Smart-Soft gets exactly such) there are vendors. This is the logic of IT development: products and solutions become smarter and more complex, and their operation, on the contrary, is simplified.
In a small business, IT professionals can no longer be called engineers: rather, they are qualified technicians and the software for this segment needs to be developed so that even novice administrators do not have serious difficulties with it.
And if problems do arise, the direct responsibility of the developer is to help the customer not only with his own product, but also with the accompanying ones. Because people exploit complex solutions and similar intersections are inevitable. One can argue for a long time whether this is good or bad (of course, modern skilled "fitter" should not be as honorable as the computer "shaman" of the early nineties), but alas, no other options. Neither we nor the system administrators, nor the customers.
First, let's look at where Microsoft operating systems are used, which have been leading in the number of installations for many years. According to various studies, the market share of Linux - one of the most popular alternatives to Windows - does not exceed 4% (there are also opinions that it is much less). In fact, the total number of installations says nothing. This is like the average temperature in the hospital: taking the morgue with the infectious diseases department and averaging the indicators, we get the physiological norm of 36.6 (which does not reflect the real situation).
It is necessary to take into account the different industry niches that give us a completely different picture. For example, in the supercomputer segment, Linux reigns almost completely, and the share of Windows is vanishingly small here: Doubters can get acquainted with the list of the most productive computing systems on the planet.
')
If we talk about web servers, here the share of a free OS is measured in tens of percent (more precisely, you can’t say it, because the researchers publish different results). Taking a more general context, one can see a steady increase in revenue from sales of servers on Linux: according to IDC, in the fourth quarter of 2012 it exceeded 20% of the total money raised for servers. An important point: experts explain the increase in the share of Linux by the high demand for productive systems (including for the deployment of corporate cloud infrastructure).
Thus, the monopoly of Windows is provided mainly at the expense of home machines, corporate workstations, as well as servers in the SMB segment.
There is an opinion that it is much easier to master server versions of Microsoft operating systems than, say, Linux. This is not true. Solving the problems arising in complex IT infrastructure of large companies requires highly skilled administrators and there is no longer any difference with which OS they work with. For Windows, the entry threshold is lower: let's say, a small domain controller with a file server (or a gateway using Traffic Inspector) can be deployed by any employee.
And this is good, since a small company does not need to keep highly qualified specialists hung with certificates and pay them the appropriate money. Well, for consultations on non-trivial (such technical support of Smart-Soft gets exactly such) there are vendors. This is the logic of IT development: products and solutions become smarter and more complex, and their operation, on the contrary, is simplified.
In a small business, IT professionals can no longer be called engineers: rather, they are qualified technicians and the software for this segment needs to be developed so that even novice administrators do not have serious difficulties with it.
And if problems do arise, the direct responsibility of the developer is to help the customer not only with his own product, but also with the accompanying ones. Because people exploit complex solutions and similar intersections are inevitable. One can argue for a long time whether this is good or bad (of course, modern skilled "fitter" should not be as honorable as the computer "shaman" of the early nineties), but alas, no other options. Neither we nor the system administrators, nor the customers.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/180655/
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