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Many Businesses Still Using No-Longer-Supported Windows Server 2003

In another finding, vSphere continues to be the most-used hypervisor, followed by Hyper-V.

• By Kurt Mackie
• 07/13/2016

A surprising number of organizations can't shake their Windows Server 2003 habit. In fact, nearly one in five are still on the archaic operating system.

This is despite the fact that it lost Microsoft's product update support one year ago, a recent study has found.

Analysis by Spiceworks, a provider of management solutions for IT pros, found an overall 18 percent market share for Windows Server 2003, based on June sampled data. In addition, 53 percent of organizations in its survey were running "at least one instance" of Windows Server 2003.

The report, which also looked at hypervisor deployments, used data from Spiceworks' inventory software to compile the information. Samplings from "hundreds of millions of devices" were tapped, a spokesperson for the company clarified.

The 18 percent market share for Windows Server 2003, found this month by Spiceworks, is the same amount found a year ago by Big Data solutions provider CloudPhysics in its industry survey. Clearly, the samples weren't the same, but possibly the needle isn't moving too much on Windows Server 2003 upgrades.

Despite the real security issues for organization in running unsupported software, organizations likely have their reasons for not making the move. Reasons for not getting off Windows Server 2003 included "no immediate need, lack of time, and budget constraints," according to Spiceworks' report.

Windows Server 2008 topped the list of most used server software at 45 percent, per Spiceworks' data. The next most used server software was Windows Server 2012 at 24 percent. The study even discovered some Windows Server 2000 use at 1 percent. Linux server software was used by 12 percent.

Server virtualization, at 76 percent, was a common practice among organizations, per Spiceworks' study. Most organizations (71 percent) used VMware's vSphere hypervisor over Microsoft's Hyper-V (23 percent). Citrix hypervisors were used by 6 percent of organizations.

If an organization was smaller, it tended to use Hyper-V, the study found.