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Milestone: More Web Sites Run by Windows 2003 Than NT 4

In a snapshot of Windows Server 2003 deployment patterns, Web researchers at Netcraft this month found that the number of hostnames found on Web servers running Windows Server 2003 just passed the number running Windows NT.

Both appear to be just under 1.5 million hostnames each, far below the nearly 8 million hostnames on Windows 2000, according to Netcraft.

Interestingly, migrations from Windows NT 4.0 don't appear to be a major source of Windows Server 2003 systems. And that's although Microsoft plans to discontinue support for Windows NT 4.0 at the end of 2004, and is in the midst of a campaign to encourage Windows NT 4.0 users to skip ahead to Windows Server 2003.

Instead, Netcraft found the majority of sites (534,000) that migrated to Windows Server 2003 since September came from Windows 2000. Some 272,000 hostnames were new sites, 55,000 sites migrated from Linux and 56,000 sites migrated from FreeBSD.

Also this week, Netcraft reported that the hosting company with the largest number of active sites running on Windows Server 2003 is Fasthosts with more than 54,000 sites.

About the Author

Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

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