Reflections on Open Source Commerce, Part 2 - page 4

The Story Thus Far

This is a good point to reflect on the assertions and questions raised so far by examining some market statistics. The following are an update on what was provided in the Yin and Yang article.

Table 1 presents a summary of US Bureau of Census information showing the distribution of businesses by number of employees. The growth of the US work force between 2002 and 2005 was 3.48%, the number of large businesses ( more than 500 employees) grew by 3.75%, the total number of firms grew by 5%.

Table 1: US Business Distribution by Size�1988, 2002 and 2005
YEAR	DATA TYPE	TOTAL	Number of Employees
			<20	20-99	100-499	>500
1988 � �	Firms	4,954,645	4,444,463	430,640	66,708	12,824
	Establishments	6,016,367	4,516,707	581,622	244,697	673,341
	Employment	87,844,303	18,319,642	16,833,702	12,761,379	39,929,580
2002 � �	Firms	5,697,759	5,090,331	508,249	82,334	16,845
	Establishments	7,200,770	5,147,526	692,775	332,508	1,027,961
	Employment	112,400,654	20,583,371	19,874,069	15,908,852	56,034,362
2005 � �	Firms	5,983,546	5,357,887	520,897	87,285	17,477
	Establishments	7,499,702	5,409,151	679,382	331,999	1,079,170
	Employment	116,317,003	21,289,196	20,444,349	16,911,040	57,672,418
Source: http://www.census.gov/

In the Yin and Yang article world GDP was used to factor US businesses demographics to arrive at a world business and server usage estimate. Table 2 provides the most recently published GDP information. A column was added to report the ratio of area GDP to the global GDP. The factor for the US economic GDP contribution has remained almost static, while other countries show marked changes. These figures imply contrary to expectation that Indias' contribution to GDP declined over the past three years. It might be an interesting exercise to explore what the cause may be and to what extent this may bias the assumptions made in Table 3.

Table 2: Global GDP for 2007 (Est)
AREA	2004			2007 Estimates
	US$ Billion	Percent	Global Factor	US$ Billion	Percent	Global Factor
Total	55,500	�	�	65,820	�	�
US	11,800	21.26%	4.7	13,860	21.06%	4.7
EU	11,700	21.08%	4.7	14,450	21.95%	4.6
China	7,260	13.08%	7.6	7,043	10.70%	9.3
Japan	3,750	6.76%	14.8	4,417	6.71%	14.9
India	3,320	5.98%	16.7	2,965	4.50%	22.2
Rest of World	17,670	31.84%	3.1	23,085	35.07%	2.9
Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2001rank.html

Table 3: The Global Server Market
Company Size	Employees per Company	Average Users/ Server	US Number (2002)	Global Factor	Global Number	# Servers	% of Total Servers	% of Companies
>500	3,326	45	16,845	3.0	50,535	3,735,098	7.20%	0.19%
100-499	193	10	82,334	4.0	329,336	6,356,185	12.25%	1.23%
20-99	39	10	508,249	5.0	2,541,245	9,910,856	19.10%	9.47%
<20	4	3	5,090,331	4.7	23,924,556	31,899,408	61.46%	89.12%
2002 Total	�	�	5,697,759	4.7	26,845,672	51,901,546	100.00%	100.00%
�
Company Size	Employees per Company	Average Users/ Server	US Number (2005)	Global Factor	Global Number	# Servers	% of Total Servers	% of Companies
>500	3,300	45	17,477	3.0	52,431	3,844,940	7.07%	0.19%
100-499	194	10	87,285	4.0	349,140	6,773,316	12.46%	1.24%
20-99	39	10	520,897	5.0	2,604,485	10,157,492	18.69%	9.24%
<20	4	3	5,357,887	4.7	25,182,069	33,576,092	61.78%	89.34%
2005 Total	�	�	5,983,546	4.7	28,188,125	54,351,839	100.00%	100.00%

From Tables 1 and 2 has been derived an estimate of the number of servers that are used in global infrastructure computing. The findings previously reported for 2002 are shown together with the 2005 numbers in Table 3. The average factor shown in the total line equals that shown for the US in Table 2. As was done previously, it has been assumed that compared with global business size distribution, the US has a disproportionate number of large (more than 500 employee and 100-499 employee) businesses, so the factor is therefore lower in this area. It is therefore also assumed that the global ratio of 20-99 employment businesses is lower in the US than elsewhere, thus the factor for that was increased to compensate. Based on the assumptions shown, the total number of infrastructure computing servers has grown from 51.9 million to 54.4 million over three years. It is left as an exercise for others to confirm or dispute these estimates.

Between 2004 and 2008 it has been estimated that world internet usage has grown from 974 million users to 1.355 billion. The indicated growth rate calculates at approximately 8% compound growth per year. The usage growth column in Table 4 shows that most internet usage growth has taken place outside of the US.

Table 4: World Internet Usage Statistics
World Regions	Population (2008 Est.) (Million)	Population % of World	Internet Usage, Latest Data (Million)	% Population (Penetration )	World Users %	Usage Growth 2000-2008
Africa	955	14.3%	45	4.7%	3.3%	903.9%
Asia	3,776	56.6%	512	13.6%	37.8%	348.1%
Europe	800	12.0%	374	46.8%	27.6%	256.1%
Middle East	197	3.0%	34	17.0%	2.5%	923.7%
North America	337	5.1%	243	72.2%	18.0%	125.2%
Latin America / Caribbean	576	8.6%	127	22.1%	9.4%	603.4%
Oceania / Australia	34	0.5%	19	56.5%	1.4%	151.6%
WORLD TOTAL	6,676	100.0%	1,355	20.3%	100.0%	275.4%
Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

The Netcraft web server survey reported that on October 24, 2005, there were 74.4 million publicly accessible web servers globally. The April 2008 report claims that responses have been received from 165.7 million web servers. This is a significant growth in the number of web sites that are being hosted, however one needs to be careful not to conclude that this parallels the number of physical servers in use. Growth estimates for these are best obtained from IDC server shipment statistics.

It is clear from the world internet usage statistics that there is a significant rate of growth of potential desktop systems users. The growth rate in this area far exceeds the rate of growth of the installed server market and is therefore of primary interest as a means of gaining increased Linux adoption.