News

Nearly 100,000 Active Web Sites Built on Windows Server 2003

• By Scott Bekker
• July 17, 2003

Researchers at Netcraft say Windows Server 2003 is closing in on its 100,000th active Web site in the three months since the launch of Microsoft's latest operating system. The official count is 88,400 active Web sites, according to Netcraft's monthly survey of about 18 million active Web sites.

All Microsoft Web servers together account for about 4.7 million active Web sites, with roughly three quarters of those running Windows 2000 and Internet Information Services 5.0, according to Netcraft. By comparison, the Apache Web server accounts for more than 13 million active sites.

Most of the Windows Server 2003 Web sites are at huge hosting companies that have chosen to push customer sites over to the new OS. Better than half of the sites, more than 50,000, are located on servers at just seven hosting companies, including Myhosting.com, Fasthosts, AdvancedAccess and Interland.

According to Netcraft, Windows Server 2003 has enjoyed a 300 percent increase in usage since before the April 24 launch. Meanwhile, Netcraft notes, that 8,000 of the active sites that are currently on Windows Server 2003 were running Linux in December 2002, a heartening sign for Microsoft.