The October 2002 Netcraft Web Server Survey

             The October 2002 Netcraft Web Server Survey is out;


                     http://www.netcraft.com/survey/


                               Top Developers

        Developer September 2002 Percent October 2002 Percent Change
        Apache          21421748   59.91     21258824   60.54   0.63
        Microsoft       10433095   29.18     10144453   28.89  -0.29
        Zeus              742781    2.08       711998    2.03  -0.05
        iPlanet           485818    1.36       478413    1.36   0.00

                                Active Sites

        Developer September 2002 Percent October 2002 Percent Change
        Apache          10449418   64.85     10470848   65.39   0.54
        Microsoft        4071863   25.27      4013397   25.06  -0.21
        iPlanet           237802    1.48       227424    1.42  -0.06
        Zeus              220729    1.37       215957    1.35  -0.02



   Around the Net

   Competition in SSL Certificate Market becoming lively

   When Verisign bought Mark Shuttleworth's Thawte Consulting almost
   three years ago, it gave Verisign 99% of the SSL server certificates
   deployed on the internet. However, very shortly afterwards Microsoft
   relaxed its policy of refusing requests for new root certificates in
   Explorer. Root certificates introduced at that time now have
   reasonably good ubiquity, and are permitting a much wider range of
   players to compete effectively in the market. Most of the Certificate
   Authorities now understand that the market is a naturally price
   sensitive one, with a large number of sites simply going with the
   cheapest certificate on the premise that they all approximately do
   the same thing.

   Over the last three years [1]Geotrust have, primarily through
   competitive pricing, garnered 10% of the market, and have become the
   role model competitor to Verisign in the way that Thawte had been
   before Verisign bought it.

   However, over the last few months competition has intensified with a
   newer player [2]Comodo quickly gaining 1% of the market with even
   cheaper pricing, while established players such as [3]Entrust and
   [4]Globalsign have also reduced their prices in a renewed effort to
   win share from Verisign.

   To date Verisign's approach has been to try and raise profits rather
   than defend each percentage point of market share, and it has actually
   increased certificate prices at Thawte. The number of ssl sites has
   continued to grow, so that Verisign today has in excess of 400,000
   active server [5]certs, roughly two and a half times what we project
   it would have had at the time of the Thawte acquisition. Even so, the
   SSL Certificate market has become the most competitive it has ever
   been, and one can expect this to intensify, not purely through cheaper
   certificate prices, but also in greater sophistication of web server
   certificate bundles which typically may include performance
   measurement and [6]security testing.


   Solaris 9, Windows .Net Server & Superb Internet

   We received some well informed feedback on [7]last months article on
   the adoption rate of Solaris 9.

   Some people thought that they had seen Microsoft using the information
   incorrectly, with Microsoft claiming a lead for Windows .Net Server,
   when Solaris 9 was slightly in front. The confusion arose because in
   the article we made a comparison of the numbers of ip addresses
   running the new operating systems, and the metric used by Microsoft in
   their briefings was a straight count of hostnames, on which Windows
   .Net Server did indeed have a lead.

   [8]Superb Internet mailed us, doubting our figure for Solaris 9, on
   the basis that their company had recently upgraded to Solaris 9, and
   the number of sites that they had migrated exceeded our total for the
   whole world. In fact Superb Internet were far too modest in their
   expectations - last months survey was run prior to their upgrade, and
   they actually do have more Solaris 9 sites than we find in the rest of
   the entire Internet.


References

  1. http://www.geotrust.com/
  2. http://www.comodo.net/
  3. http://www.entrust.com/
  4. http://www.globalsign.com/
  5. http://www.verisign.com/corporate/investor/releases/q32002.html
  6. http://www.netcraft.com/security/
  7. http://www.netcraft.com/Survey/index-200209.html
  8. http://www.superb.net/



Internet Research from Netcraft.

Netcraft does commercial internet research projects. These include
custom cuts on the Web Server Survey data, hosting industry analysis, 
corporate use of internet technology and bespoke projects. All of the data 
is gathered through network exploration, not teleresearch.

sales@netcraft.com


Network Security Testing from Netcraft.

Netcraft provides automated network security testing of customer networks
and consultancy audits of ecommerce sites, Clients include IBM, 
Hewlett Packard, Deloitte & Touche, Energis, Britannic Asset Management,
Guardian Royal Exchange, Lloyds of London, Laura Ashley, etc.


Details at http://www.netcraft.com/security/


To unsubscribe from the Netcraft Web Server Survey Announcements list
send the message 

unsubscribe webserver-survey

to majordomo@netcraft.com

To resubscribe send the message

subscribe webserver-survey



Mike
-- 
Mike Prettejohn
mhp@@netcraft.com  Phone +44 1225 447500  Fax +44 1225 448600
Netcraft  Rockfield House  Granville Road Bath BA1 9BQ  England