Thursday, March 4, 2010

(Trends): What’s Your Favorite Alternate Browser?

One of the things about the exo.repository that we most like to demonstrate is how it allows us to extract market trending data points that nobody else has. Whether it’s the rate at which internal IE organizations are shedding IE 6.0 (hint: it’s a stampede), or how a new version of Windows is driving base RAM configurations through the roof, we love it when we come out with something truly unique.

Such is the case with one of our newer charting products, “% Users Running IE + Other.” By combing the process records of our 24,000+ registered exo.performance.network users, we can determine not only which browser they use most often (still, sadly, Internet Explorer), but also which 3rd party web browsers they use in addition to Microsoft’s ubiquitous IE.

This is especially useful when trying to reconcile the often conflicting reports of decreasing IE market share on the public web with those of IT organizations “clinging” to Microsoft’s browser out of a need to support legacy in-house web applications. But when you factor in real-world telemetry data from the exo.repository, the picture becomes much clearer.

Figure 1 – What’s Your Favorite Alternate Web Browser?

Yes, it’s true that IT organizations continue to rely on IE extensively within their enterprises, a fact born about by the over 80% of systems we monitor which show IE in use for several hours each day. However, this seemingly disproportionate number begins to make sense when you consider that these same IE users are also regularly running at least one 3rd party web browser – most typically, Firefox or Google Chrome. In fact, upwards of 31% the systems sampled which run IE also run Firefox, while better than 18% of sampled systems run Google Chrome (in addition to Internet Explorer).

Clearly, there’s more going on with web browser market/usage share than has been reported by the mainstream IT press – and that’s because the media have traditionally relied on public-facing monitoring solutions, like NetApplications, to provide them with market share numbers. But the public web is only part of the picture. What we’re providing here, at the exo.performance.network, is a different perspective: A unique (aggregated/anonymized) look inside the thousands of Windows-based systems that contribute to our growing community of IT professionals and organizations.

And, of course, we do it all for free – our way of giving back to a Windows IT community that has provided us with the support and resources we needed to construct the exo.performance.network in the first place.

Note: The above statistics were generated from the over 14 billion process metrics records collected from the over 24,000 registered, active xpnet.com users. If you’d like more information about the exo.performance.network, including how to reproduce the above chart object (for free) on your own site or weblog, please visit our web site: www.xpnet.com.

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Tuesday, March 2, 2010

(Editorial): 24,000+ Users and Counting!

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve just passed the 24,000 registered user level. Thanks to an influx of new contributors from Poland (Viva Polska!), the exo.performance.network went over that heady mark earlier today, bringing our total repository statistics to a new all-time high:

  • Over 240 million system metrics records – per week!

  • Over 14 billion process metrics records – per week!

  • A huge cross-section of OS versions, including Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 – along with a mix of Server 2000, 2003, 2008 and 2008 R2 systems.

  • The industry’s only composite index of Windows system performance: WCPI.

  • A growing library of Windows market composition and trending charts – 31 so far, with more on the way!.

We’d like to thank our users for their continued support during recent days. Our steady growth is irrefutable evidence of the tremendous value we deliver every day through our free tools and services. A special thanks to everyone who emailed us with words of encouragement – we greatly appreciate your support and promise to carry on delivering the best analysis and insight in the business.

RCK

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(Trends): 1 in 4 Users Running Google Chrome

Google Chrome is on fire. The latest snapshot from the exo.repository shows the nascent web browser running on nearly one out of every four (24.88%) PCs monitored by the exo.performance.network. This represents a 2 percentage point jump in a single week, and a nearly 7 percentage point jump since the beginning of the year.

Figure 1 – Web Browser Usage Share

Meanwhile, Internet Explorer use remains strong, with better than four out of five (80.56%) exo users running some version of IE during the course of the day. And despite headlines decrying the continued use of IE 6.0 in the enterprise, exo.performance.network contributors continue to walk on the cutting edge. Fully 85% of exo monitored Vista users are running Microsoft’s latest version, Internet Explorer 8.0, while nearly 72% of exo monitored Windows XP users are running the new browser.

Figure 2 – IE Versions – % of Users of Each Platform

Suddenly, organizations like Intel – with its slow burn adoption of new Windows and IE versions – look even more out of touch with the mainstream. And with Google and others cutting-off access to their sites for IE 6.0 users, our community of IT professionals and forward looking organizations is in excellent position to weather the storm.

Note: The above statistics were generated from the over 13 billion process records collected from the over 24,000 registered, active xpnet.com users. If you’d like more information about the exo.performance.network, including how to reproduce the above chart object on your own site or blog, please visit www.xpnet.com.

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