How big is the AIX market?

Does anyone have any info on the actual size of the global AIX market is in terms of physical machines (RS/6000, pSeries, System p, IBMp)? Any leads would be appreciated. Thanks

It is very big. IBM P series servers are very reliable for businesses and AIX is one of the best operating system because of features like LVM,HACMP,VIO concepts

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Thank you for that. As to the number of machines, are you in a position to make a best guess?

---------- Post updated at 03:51 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:49 PM ----------

Incidentally, I am an IBM i person and it is quoted there are 450,000 of those world-wide.

---------- Post updated at 03:52 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:51 PM ----------

450,000 IBM i's that is....

The RS6000 / P Series / System P / AIX platform is much bigger than the old AS400 / i platform these days.

Although the hardware is now common and just referred to as Power the number of AIX "instances" versus "i" is HUGE, not only are there still millions of standalone and older AIX systems out there, the take up of new AIX instances is enormous and still increasing compared to i which is sadly maintaining a steady decline.

As an IBM i person you should be aware of the whole i development and support structure steadily receding back to Rochester as the product footprint recedes.

Some have been saying, for years, that i is so stable that little development is needed and the same applies to the support structure but they are obviously kidding them selves.

IBM will continue to maintain the i environment for the foreseeable future but the writing has been on the wall for a long time, where as AIX is now the leading enterprise unix and continues to go from strength to strength - and I'm not just posting this because of my involvement and love of AIX i have very real and direct experience in a wide market of the growth of AIX and the decline of i.

HTH.

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Hi,
according to Gartner, AIX had in 2008 a marketshare of 38% and grows by about 4% per year while both solaris and hpux are declining. They expect AIX to cross the 50% some time this year - how many boxes really are out there is hard to say as the big machines like a 780 or 795 could easily host well over a hundred lpars each.

Regards
zxmaus

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ZXMAUS:

When you say "AIX to cross 50% this year", do you mean 50% of the UNIX market?

If that is the case, then you have provided me with the answer I am looking for - expressed as a market share %'age rather than an actual number.

Thank you

Hi Elias,

yes 50% of the unix market.

Regards
zxmaus

How big is the UNIX market in comparison to Windows/Linux/Mac servers?

IMHO. IBM AIX achieving 50% of the unix worldwide market in 2011 is pure fantasy. Please post verifiable statistics.

Btw. Finding reasons to ignore Sun Solaris 10 installations is not an option.