Server and Network OS

There are no prizes for guessing the winning brand in this segment. Windows

2003 Server tops the charts leaving behind even its successor, Windows Server

2008 by a wide margin.

The other brands that made it to the club were even further down and well

below Win2k8 server. Interestingly, none of the Linux brands received sufficient

votes, hence they're not included in the club. The other brands that are

included in the club are IBM AIX, Solaris, and surprisingly Windows 2000 Server.

The interesting part is that while Windows Server 2003 enjoys the highest

brand recall, current brand ownership, etc, it's Windows Server 2008 that enjoys

the highest 'shift-in' to the brand.

Obviously, people now want to shift to the new OS instead of the old one, but

interestingly since Windows Server 2008 is released, its not able to take aways

the mind share from Windows Server 2003 yet in a big way.

Another significant point worth noting here is that if you combine the top of

the mind recall for Win Server 2008 and 2003, then that's 70% mind share of the

IT decision makers in India. This clearly indicates that Microsoft has a great

presence in Indian Server Market.

The primary reason why these two operating systems reasons were chosen by

their owners was product reliability, while those who are likely to purchase

these two OSs in the near future gave brand value as their primary reason.

Coming to industry wise analysis, Windows Server 2003 has the strongest brand

perception across all seven industries we reached out to, followed by Windows

2008 Server. The brand perception score for other brands are fairly low across

all segments, with minor variations.

In brand loyalty, 49% of existing Windows Server 2003 users said they were

likely to remain with the same brand, while only 15% said that they would

migrate to Windows Server 2008. So obviously, there's still not enough reason

for users to upgrade to the new OS.

In fact, brand loyalty of Windows Server 2008 stood at 40%, with 10% of its

existing users saying they're likely to move to Windows Server 2003 in the near

future.

Does this mean that users are not satisfied with Windows 2008 Server due to

some reason? Or maybe Windows Server 2008 is relatively new compared to Win 2003

Server, and users were not willing to shift to the former due to the recession

for the new servers they are willing to purchase in the near future.

Now that the market is picking up, maybe we'll see a completly different

result for this segment next year.