IBM Research Report Sample

Windows Server 2003 showed a 25% decrease in per-server annual uptime, while Windows 2000 Server uptime declined slightly to only 5%. In the latest poll, Windows Server 2003 recorded 8.9 hours of downtime versus just more than 7 hours in the prior 12-month period. Its predecessor Windows 2000 Server fared much better. Downtime per server notched up by 5% to 9.9 hours compared to 9.3 hours per server per year in the 2006 poll. Microsoft’s Windows 2000 Server, now nearly 9 years old, recorded the most per-server yearly downtime—just less than 9.9 hours—although that is only a slight increase from the Yankee Group 2006 Global Server Reliability Survey.

A decrease in uptime for Windows or any stable and mature operating systems must be considered an anomaly. The decline in Windows Server 2003 reliability statistics are dismaying to corporations because the Microsoft server operating system is in use at 91% of the sites we surveyed, while 74% of businesses still use Windows 2000 Server, down from 87% in the 2006 Global Server Reliability Survey.

Upon deeper investigation, security was found to be the clear culprit. In the summer and fall when Yankee Group conducted its survey, Microsoft issued more than a dozen security alerts and patches. And to make matters worse, many of these were critical vulnerabilities.