The Server Operating System Market: Key Players, Trends, and Outlook

The server operating system (OS) market plays a crucial role in supporting enterprise IT infrastructure and running critical business workloads. The market has undergone shifts in recent years due to the rise of cloud computing, virtualization, containerization, and changing workloads.

The Server operating system market industry size is projected to grow from USD 17.3 Billion in 2023 to USD 43.6 Billion by 2032

Key Players

Microsoft - Windows Server is the long-time leader for on-premise server OS deployments. Windows Server 2022 is the latest release, optimized for hybrid cloud environments. Azure services further tie Windows Server into Microsoft's cloud ecosystem. Microsoft also offers Windows Server in the cloud through Azure.

Red Hat - Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) leads the Linux distributions with an estimated 23% share of the broader Linux OS market. RHEL provides stability and certifications for running enterprise workloads. Red Hat builds in support for cloud-native technologies like containers.

VMware - Alongside its server virtualization software vSphere, VMware offers vSphere ESXi. This bare-metal hypervisor runs directly on server hardware without a base OS. VMware has a sizable presence from its virtualization leadership.

IBM - IBM z/OS continues to run core systems at many financial services and public sector organizations. IBM maintains its foothold in the market by evolving mainframe capabilities and tying into cloud and off-platform services.

SUSE - SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) is the number two Linux server OS behind RHEL. SUSE pitches SLES for high availability, security, and performance-sensitive applications. SUSE offers flexibility by supporting multiple architectures and deployment models.

Trends Driving the Server OS Market

• Cloud computing growth - Public cloud platforms like AWS have driven Linux adoption and provide alternatives to on-premise Windows servers for some workloads. However, many organizations take a hybrid approach spanning cloud and internal servers.
• Containerization - Container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes predominantly run on Linux. Containers provide greater portability and scalability for modern applications across infrastructure.
• Increasing open source adoption - Open source software like Linux, OpenStack, and Kubernetes provide organizations more flexibility, interoperability, and control compared to proprietary solutions.
• On-premise server resilience - Despite cloud growth, many organizations still rely heavily on on-premise servers to run business applications requiring high performance, low latency, security, or local control. Windows Server retains strength serving these internal workloads.
• Virtualization and software-defined infrastructure - Server virtualization uncouples OS instances from hardware, allowing flexibility and consolidation. Software-defined principles also bring automation and infrastructure-as-code capabilities.
• Changing workloads - Modern workloads built around applications, containers, microservices, and serverless computing favor Linux. But Windows persists among legacy applications.
• Hardware architecture shifts - ARM servers and accelerators like GPUs/FPGAs bring hardware diversity to the datacenter. This benefits Linux thanks to its hardware flexibility.

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The Outlook for Server OS Market Share

The server OS market will see a continued push-and-pull between Windows and Linux as organizations optimize infrastructure for evolving application architectures and workload requirements.

Linux is expected to continue making gradual share gains in the server OS market, though Microsoft will work to strengthen its hold on the enterprise segment. Much comes down to whether public cloud adoption accelerates to the point of significantly displacing on-premise servers running Windows.

Meanwhile, mainframes will remain relevant for certain workloads. The server OS landscape overall will support diverse operating systems and computing architectures tailored to different use cases as technology progresses. Organizations will seek the right platforms to support evolving workload needs at scale and deliver business value.