Port80 Software (I've covered its fine products in several previous issues of this newsletter - see editorial links) just sent me an interesting press release. According to its recent "Top 1000 Application Servers Survey" of Fortune 1000 companies, use of Microsoft's ASP.NET, ASP, and Internet Information Server beat all of the competition combined.

The survey found that Microsoft platforms (ASP.NET, ASP) constituted 43.6% of servers, with Java platforms (J2EE, JSP, WebLogic, WebSphere, Tomcat) coming in second place at 12.2%. The others are PHP at 5.2%, ColdFusion with 2.7%, Perl at 2.3%, and Python (Zope) bringing up the rear at a scant 0.1%.

In addition, Port80 tabulated the use of Web server platforms by the F1000 and found Microsoft IIS again leading with 53.7% followed by Apache with 22.7%, other Web servers at 12.8%, and Netscape Enterprise at 10.8%.

This last set of statistics is worth contrasting with the total Web server population as measured by the Netcraft "June 2005 Web Server Survey" of 64,808,485 Web sites. This study, published June 1, placed Apache in the lead with 69.70%, followed by Microsoft at 20.26%, Sun at 2.85%, and Zeus at 0.90%.

Let me tabulate that for you:

Platform                            Port80 study    Netcraft study
Microsoft IIS                    53.7%              20.26%
Apache                             22.7%              69.70%
All other Web servers       23.6%              10.04%

This would seem to indicate that the Microsoft F1000 dominance may be due to entrenched purchasing habits because Apache's market share and, by inference, the market share of LAMP (Linux+Apache+MySQL+Perl/Python/PHP) has exceeded that of Microsoft+IIS since the latter's release in February 1995.

If you are a developer aiming for today's enterprise market, you now know your target. If you are a developer aiming at the long-term market, things look a little different.

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger.