Looks like they never learn! Yet another report that the good people at Yankee Group written by none other than a writer whose ability to analyse and understand data has been questioned (Google cache), here, and here.

One should also listen to her views about how Linux companies are “not offering as much indemnification as Microsoft”. I already have a very low opinion of “analysts” and this lady just helps reinforce that.

Having said all of that, let’s just look at what they are saying: “In a head-to-head comparison, Windows Server 2003 shows the highest reliability gains, leading Red Hat Enterprise Linux with nearly 20% more annual uptime in similar deployment scenarios.” So, what we are talking about here is that ws2003’s reliability increased 20% compared with RHEL?

“… individual corporate Linux, Windows and Unix servers experience three to five failures per server per year, resulting in 10.0 to 19.5 hours of annual downtime for each server. In addition, standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux and niche open source vendors gained more outage time compared to Windows or Unix competitors.” – gained more outage time? Let me see, “there was more times the coffee stained the right shirt pocket than the left”. Relevant and thought provoking analysis?

Yes, I am quoting from their press release. Why would I want to pay good money to get a report that has to say “additional key results for the independent, non-sponsored Yankee Group 2006 Global Server Reliability Survey …” and they only way for them to try to whip up interest is to put teasers that some PHB will think “wow!”?