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Web Servers of the Fortune 500: A Dissection and Analysis
Jul 21, 2000, 17 :30 UTC (12 Talkback[s]) (6064 reads) (Other stories by Matthew Keller)

By

I was minding my own business, checking my snail mail at the office, when all of a sudden I was assaulted: "IIS Most Used Web Server Among Fortune 500 Sites" slapped me upside the head like a two-liter shot of Mountain Dew. For those of you who haven't read the cover story of Volume 5 Number 10 of ENT or seen the article on their website--go do that first, and then come back.

After recovering from what I though must have been wrong, biased marketing research, I set out to prove ENT wrong.

Method

I wrote a small Perl script that went to Fortune's Web site, pulled out the list of Fortune 500 companies, extracted their "brochure site" address, and then polled that address with an HTTP HEAD request. This returns the HTTP server string, along with some other information. The same script then used nmap to ascertain the operating system. After the script was finished, it compared the results I just collected with what Netcraft had listed for both server and operating system.

After looking through the results and then manually inspecting some of the sites, I noticed that Netcraft's method of ascertaining the operating system was much more accurate than nmap, most of the time, so I merged their OS data with mine.

After all of this happy automation, I decided to go one step further and actually look at the Web sites--yes, all 500 of them. You find out some interesting things when looking at all those pages. For example, when you go to K-Mart's homepage at www.kmart.com (running IIS4 on Windows), you get automatically redirected to www.bluelight.com (running Netscape-Enterprise 3.6 on Solaris). Another neat factoid is that, in my opinion, Berkshire Hathaway gets the "Least Impressive Web Site of the Fortune 500" award. All funny business aside, the results were astounding.

Results

Results of the survey

I set about this study with a mission: To objectively collect data on the "brochure sites" of the Fortune 500. My secondary objective, of course, was to disprove the ENT study. My results were almost identical to theirs, however. If you look at the entire Fortune 500, from General Motors all the way to ReliaStar Financial, IIS reigns king. If you, however, look at subsets of the Fortune 500 and the types of companies represented, the picture is much different. Netscape Enterprise Server dominates until the Fortune 300 is looked at as an aggragate, where both Netscape and Microsoft share 41 percent of the market. This information was embedded in the ENT article as well.

Analysis

So far, I haven't really told you much more than the ENT article, so let's start analyzing this information.

IIS

When I look through the Who's Who of IIS users in the Fortune 500, one thing strikes me: These companies are not, by in large, technology companies. They are retailers, department-store chains, auto manufacturers, grocers, drug stores--big companies that aren't in the technology field. Sure, there are exceptions (Microsoft, Compaq, Intel, Dell, Gateway, Qwest, and a few others all rely on IIS) but in general I'm seeing JC Penney's, Quaker Oats, Sherwin-Williams: companies that probably are using IIS simply because it's included with NT and doesn't require a "UNIX freak" to administer. Before you go jumping to conclusions, let me explain how I came to this conclusion.

Looking at all of the Web servers being used by these companies, only four different Web servers are being used on a Windows operating system (IIS, Netscape-Enterprise, Lotus-Domino, and Website Pro); out of these, Lotus-Domino is being used on five Windows boxes, Netscape-Enterprise is being used on 10 Windows boxes, and WebSitePro is being used on three Windows boxes. Quite obviously people who are running some flavor of Windows as their Web server don't bother changing. I suppose the argument could be made that these companies are conciously buying Windows + IIS, but I doubt that you can convince me that the majority of these companies are basing their IIS usage on anything but price, availability, and ease of administration. IIS is free for NT/2000 Servers, installed with the OS (unless you opt out), and painless to administer for trivial Web sites.

Windows 2000 use in the Fortune 500 is pretty minimal. Only two companies in the Fortune 100 are running it, and one of them is Microsoft! Only 12 Fortune 500 companies seem to have adopted the Win2000/IIS5 pair at this point.

Microsoft-IIS had 20 percent of the Fortune 25, 22 percent of the Fortune 100, 35 percent of the Fortune 200, and 41 percent of the Fortune 300, 400 and 500.

Netscape-Enterprise

Netscape-Enterprise comes in a close second for the "Platform Diversity of the Fortune 500" award (second to Apache). Solaris is the most popular OS to run Netscape-Enterprise on, but AIX and HP-UX make up a good number as well as the scattered Windows users. SunOS4, Tru64 and IRIX also padded the diversity of Netscape-Enterprise.

When I look through the Who's Who of Netscape-Enterprise users in the Fortune 500, two things strike me: These companies tend to be high-tech and/or high-finance--companies like Boeing, Aetna, Goldman Sachs, Prudential, MCI Worldcom, AT&T, Bell Atlantic, and Charles Schwab, who need scalability and solid security. Let's face it, IIS doesn't run on a 36-processor Solaris server like Netscape-Enterprise does (Apache does too, and Apache 2 will be magnitudes better). Go ahead and tell FedEx and UPS, who have two of the busiest e-commerce applications in the Fortune 500, that they can only run on up to four processors--ha! Netscape-Enterprise is well-designed, very threaded, and therefore very scalable.

Netscape-Enterprise had 64 percent of the Fortune 25, 63 percent of the Fortune 100, 47 percent of the Fortune 200, 41 percent of the Fortune 300, 37 percent of the Fortune 400, and finished at 35 percent of the Fortune 500.

Apache

Apache Web server use, including Stronghold, a commercial secure Web server built on Apache, cleanly won the "Platform Diversity of the Fortune 500" award with at least 10 different operating systems being used.

There doesn't seem to be a pattern to Apache users. A lot of the companies are service-oriented, such as CBS, Sysco, Cendant, and ADP. But there are also some product companies like Oracle, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and Maytag. Several financial heavyweights also rely on either Stronghold or mod_ssl, such as Allmerica Financial, MBNA, and SouthTrust Corp.

Apache also has the capability of reporting what major modules are being used in the server string, and although a lot of sites chose not to disclose this information, some did. Mod_php was the most popular reported module at 19, followed by mod_perl with 11, and a tie between mod_ssl and Stronghold (yes, I know Stonghold isn't a module) at eight. Covalent's Raven SSL module was reported on one server. Other modules and Apache projects used included ApacheJserv, Tomcat, mod_frontpage, mod_fastcgi, mod_oas, and other proprietary modules used by CBS, Oracle, and others.

Apache had 8 percent of the Fortune 25, 12 percent of Fortune 100, 10 percent of the Fortune 200, 12 percent of the Fortune 300, 14 percent of the Fortune 400, and finally 15 percent of the Fortune 500.

Trends

Describeme

Based on the trends shown in the accompanying figure, it looks like Microsoft's IIS cuts in on the iPlanet Web server, while Apache and everyone else are acting as minor detractors in the heavyweight slugfest. Before you criticize this graph for not properly presenting the data, let me just make it clear that the jump from "Top 25" to "Top 100" is only representing the change in 75 servers, as opposed to the 100 servers that all of the other points represent, and is only shown for comparison purposes.

Flaws

There are many flaws in both my study and the ENT study. Neither of our studies looked at a more global picture and are both very narrow in scope. Here are just a few of the major holes to keep in mind when reading this data.

Misrepresentation

The most glaring hole in our research is one of numbers: Polling all of the www.companyname.com sites is only a small fraction of all of the Web servers being used by an organization. For example, although www.apple.com has MacOSX running Apache in their pool, www.mac.com, itools.mac.com, and others (also owned by Apple) are running Netscape-Enterprise on BSD/OS almost exclusively. Compaq's brochure site at www.compaq.com may be running Windows and IIS4, but they've got a whole slew of Tru64 servers running Netscape-Enterprise.

Marketing Engine vs. Real Workhorse

Another hole in this research is one of politics. I don't know how many times I've had a client call me and say, "Jim in Marketing says we need a Web site, how much will that cost?" I always roll my eyes at these calls because I know what "Jim" is going to want for a Web server is Windows and IIS. Why? Because he has Windows on his desk, so there is virtually no learning curve. A lot of so-called "brochure sites" are commissioned, if not run, buy marketing personnel who don't necessarilly make choices based on performance or scalability, but rather on convenience. Don't get me wrong, I know plenty of technology-savvy marketing people; my only point is that the decision of OS and Server software for Web sites can sometimes be made by less-than- knowledgeable people.

Purpose

Another point to look at is purpose. As I mentioned in my last "flaw," not every company is looking for a real workhorse when they get a Web server. Some companies just want to set up a Web presence and let the marketing people have fun and perhaps draw a few more customers and make a few more dollars--they aren't big e-commerce giants or depend on their Web site to make them money in any way other than marketing. These companies will look for ease-of-administration above performance, and even above cost most of the time.

Traffic

Another area this study does not look at is traffic. High-traffic powerhouses like FedEx, UPS, Yahoo, Netscape, and AOL have a lot at stake when they pick a Web server and operating system. Yahoo! needs to be able to respond to a user's search request as fast as possible, while also responding to hundreds of thousands of other requests at the same time. Their needs and wants for a Web server is much different than some company that doesn't get all that much traffic. Even a Fortune 500 company may not get a lot of traffic on their "brochure" site. For example, Berkshire Hathaway's website probably gets a fraction of the traffic that some of the Web sites of companies they own get, such as Geico Insurance or Dexter Shoes.

Wrap Up

I may not have forced crow down the gullets of the ENT researchers, but hopefully I've provided a rounder look at the facts surrounding this study. Apache is, bar none, the King of the Web server according to numerous studies, with both IIS and iPlanet staring ahead with drool.

My Humble Opinions

My Web server of choice for most purposes still is the Apache Web server, and that opinion will only be strengthened as the thread-aware Apache 2.0 matures into a production-grade product in the not too distant future.

The incredibly scalable iPlanet product (Netscape-Enterprise) is my most highly recommended Web server for high-traffic sites, or for sites that have heavy loads to process and need to run on an 8-, 16-, 36- or even 64-processor beast.

Although I'm not too fond of IIS, it is incredibly ease to administer and retains some degree of my respect (and thusly recommendations) in environments that need this ease, or have specific applications they need or want to run, that require COM or other Windows-centric models or tools. IIS works well in high-traffic areas in a load-balance pool, such as Microsoft's, but still flails helplessly on enterprise-level servers.

Challenge

This microcosmic study was quite time-consuming and required quite a bit of horsepower. I would love to see someone "fix" some of the flaws I mentioned above--poll the domains of Fortune 500 companies, find their Web servers, catalog all of them, and make some more pretty graphs for us to look at. I would be more than happy to share all of my data in pretty much any format (Quattro, Excel, StarOffice, tab-delimited text, etc) to anyone who is interested in either replicating this study or going further with it.

  Current Newswire:
SECURITY: Apache 1.3 Security Fix Available for Win32/OS2 users

Covalent Technologies Named to Upside Magazine's Hot 100

PR: New Max Server Pages Is Free Server-Side Web Scripting Xbase Option for Apache

Using Macromedia UltraDev with PostgreSQL, Tomcat and Apache

NewbieNetwork: Using Aggregate Functions and Operators in PostgreSQL

ZDNet: PHP and Zend

PHP DevCenter: Common PHP Installation Problems

FoxServ v1.0 Apache/MySQL/PHP Installer for Window

eWEEK: Apache 2.0 scales to Windows

Apache Week issue 244 (27th April 2001)

 Talkback(s) Name  Date
  Brochure sites completely uninteresting.
If you are not satisfied with Netcraft's "broadband" statistics, a better sub-sample than brochure sites is the Hot 100 sites. The sites and their servers (and OSes) were posted to Slashdot a week or two back. Among the top 10 busiest sites Apache did not have a majority share, though several of the sites had obscured the names of their servers. Among the full Hot 100, however, a full 59% were running Apache, which jibes pretty will with the 62% found by Netcraft in the broader survey.

Interestingly, 2 of the top 10 sites and 19 of the top 100 sites were running Linux on their servers: the astroturfers can no longer say that Linux is only used for poboy low-traffic sites.

For a few more details, and links to the Slashdot articles, see my post titled "Web stats revisited", dated 16-Jul-2000, in comp.os.linux.advocacy.
  
  Jul 21, 2000, 19:27:24
   Re: Brochure sites completely uninteresting.
> If you are not satisfied with Netcraft's "broadband" statistics, a better sub-sample than brochure sites is the Hot 100 sites.


Although I disagree with your sweeping statement that the Fortune 500 are "completely unintersting", I do agree that the Hot 100 list is much "more better" for analysis of high-traffic sites. Linux and Apache use is VERY widespread among high traffic sites, and will continue to grow. Perhaps we'll see a census of the entire Hot 100 in the not too distant future, here on ApacheToday ;)


-- Matthew Keller http://mattwork.potsdam.edu/   
  Jul 21, 2000, 19:51:14
  Bad idea to set prior objectives
My secondary objective, of course, was to disprove the ENT study
Although this is an interesting article I'd just like to make a comment about the statement above. Generally it is a bad idea to set such prior objectives and you could be accused of doing a Mindcraft. In statistics you tend to do the opposite. Draw a hypothesis and then set out to disprove it! And will someone please volunteer to give Berkshire Hathaway a free makeover....it's just too painful the eyes!   
  Jul 21, 2000, 19:30:57
   Re: Bad idea to set prior objectives
> My secondary objective, of course, was to disprove the ENT study
Although this is an interesting article I'd just like to make a comment about the statement above. Generally it is a bad idea to set such prior objectives and you could be accused of doing a Mindcraft. In statistics you tend to do the opposite. Draw a hypothesis and then set out to disprove it!

*LOL* This was put in as honest humor. :) As you may note from the article, I DIDN'T prove them wrong, in fact I reinforced their stats- Just provided a little more gusto to them. :) My Research Methods professor would kill me if he say that "secondary objective" as well!

-- Matthew Keller http://mattwork.potsdam.edu/   
  Jul 21, 2000, 19:43:27
   Re: Bad idea to set prior objectives
Although the content is uninteresting, the presentation of berkshirehathaway.com seems fine to me. Each page loads and renders instantly. Very refreshing in this age in which I spend remarkably much time waiting for pages to load over my 5Mb cable modem connection. And one can't just turn image loading off because so many sites embed critical information in graphic images now.   
  Jul 21, 2000, 23:16:41
  Weserver Penetration Study
Dear Matthew,
I liked your study, and the interpretations of how different segments of fortune 500 cos were opting for different webservers. Your study is very informative, and the first one i've read (which adds to the effect). The flaws section was very valuable.

regards,
Shankar   
  Dec 10, 2000, 07:06:34
  Interesting...
www.gm.com runs IIS on NT. However, it's just a sort of gateway to the websites of the various GM divisions (ie Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac), all of which run Netscape Enterprise 3.6 on Solaris). I'm guessing that nobody ever browses www.gm.com, choosing instead to visit the sites of the divisions, where choosing the right solution is much more important.   
  Jul 21, 2000, 20:00:03
  ENT Web Server Survey
I would like to see stats on companies that AREN'T on the Fortune 500, 1,000, etc. list. I think the analysis of the survey feels right but to be honest, who cares? At the majority of business sites, the Webmaster is some poor overworked semi-trained IT\TechSupport person, who's probably also the guy that has to teach the secretaries how to print their boss's email. I appreciate the capabilities of Apache and IIS and the others. I suspect that what we are seeing the most is that each of the server products has its strengths as the recommendations indicate. Don't discount the utility of "ease-of-administration" though. I'm a one-man IT department at a small company. I flat-out don't have time to tweak max performance out of an Apache install or program IPchains in a Linux firewall. It needs to work out of the shrinkwrap as quickly as possible. I suspect that my working condition is much more prevalent than what is likely in the Fortune 500. The decision processes and testing that they can do aren't possible for me. When our company finally gets a "real" web server running, it will most likely be MS Win2K/IIS 5.0, not because I like Microsoft or its products, its mostly because it won't take me 2 weeks to setup, program and troubleshoot the site. A week after we purchased Back Office Server, I was quizzed by management as to why nobody had email yet!
  
  Jul 22, 2000, 03:34:32
  The end result...
Companies will use what they consider to be the best hardware and software to meet their needs. Although often what "they consider" is entirely incorrect. The final result is, any company which would make its' decision on what web server to run based on haphazard survey results, and no product or market research based on predefined necessities of their particular situation, stand to make a very uninformed decision... I would keep my eyes off the surveys and into the prospectus on new versions and added functionality, if I were looking for a way to dissuade my Network Admin on the use of one web server over another.   
  Jul 22, 2000, 18:06:13
  Business decisions
The "HOT 100" suggestion is an excellent one. Both of these articles fall into the same trap.

The trap they fall into is that the Fortune 500 is an interesting sample solely because they are successful businesses. I see this all to often with stock market freaks believing a pure barometor of success is a function of stock price. For some brick and mortar corporations, the web is just an afterthought. Just because they are successful businesses doesn't mean they depend on the web or make the web an important part of their profit model. The "HOT 100" strike a more successful balance. These provide a good sample both on technical merits (load/number of hits/uptime) and on the assumption that hot companies pick web tech based on what's good for their bottom line.

Reid Hekman,
CS Major, IT Professional   
  Jul 22, 2000, 20:00:20
  Why IIS
Add together the following and you can see why I choose IIS for www.itweb.com.br:

1. Ease of administration (all the geeks at my company already knew NT).

2. It's good enough for e-Bay and ESPN (clearly it can scale).

3. ASP / VB developers are easier to find, easier to train, less expensive and have access to a vast collection of online resources to solve virtually any problem.   
  Aug 3, 2000, 15:24:13
   Re: Why IIS
> Add together the following and you can see why I choose IIS for www.itweb.com.br:
>1. Ease of administration (all the geeks at my company already knew NT).
*nod* I'll agree with that.

>2. It's good enough for e-Bay and ESPN (clearly it can scale).
I wouldn't confuse "good enough" with "it can scale". These sites need multiple physical servers to handle the load, whereas a single Netscape-Enterprise solution on a beefy enough box would "scale" much better.

>3. ASP / VB developers are easier to find, easier to train, less expensive and have access to a vast collection of online resources to solve virtually any problem.

*giggle* I'll agree with the "dime-a-dozen" part of this, but I'm afraid that Perl developers have access to more "online resources" than ASP/VB developers. PHP is finally coming around to the CPAN-esque style and is getting there as well. :)

As a Perl/PHP junkie who does ASP when clients request it (I've been doing VB since v2.0 as well) I understand all of your arguments. I firmly believe that every platform has a market, and some people, such as yourself, have legitimate reasons to run IIS. I personally like ChiliSofts Linux implementation of ASP. I find it much cooler than M$'s ASP on IIS, but I'm a little biased. ;)

-- Matthew Keller http://mattwork.potsdam.edu/   
  Aug 4, 2000, 12:58:04
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