Brian Richardson

META Trend: With highly distributed n-tier (DBMS, application, Web) server architectures commoditizing during 2002-04, Unix (other than Solaris) will recede to high-end, low-volume, niche-platform status by 2005/06. Windows will increasingly dominate for midtier application servers (2002-04), due to growing ISV reference platform momentum, and be a suitable DBMS server for 90 per cent + of application requirements. Linux on Intel ("Lintel") will be a successful high-volume Web, technical computing, and appliance server OS, but enterprise application package (2003/04) and DBMS (2005/06) server penetration will be slower. Linux software and services prices will increase to about 10 per cent - 20 per cent less than those of Windows by 2004/05.