For the third year in a row, IBM AIX Unix operating system (OS) running on the company’s Power System servers scored the highest reliability ratings among 19 different server OS platforms – including other Unix variants, Microsoft’s Windows Server, Linux distributions and Apple’s Mac OS X.

Over three-quarters or 78 percent of survey respondents indicated they experienced less than one of the most common, minor Tier 1 incidents per server, per annum on IBM’s AIX v. 5.3 and AIX v 7.1 distributions
Those are the results of the ITIC 2010-2011 Global Server Hardware and OS Reliability Survey. ITIC partnered with GFI Software (formerly Sunbelt Software) to conduct this independent Web-based survey. It polled C-level executives and IT managers at 468 corporations from 23 countries worldwide from November through January.

The survey data indicated that the reliability and uptime of all the major server OS and server hardware distributions has improved significantly over the past several years.

“Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.”

– Nikola Tesla

Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla have a lot in common with Apple, Google, HTC, and Motorola & Research in Motion.

They were/are all warriors in the ongoing war to see who can amass the largest number of the most lucrative technology patents. Edison and Tesla waged their battle from the late 1860s through the 1920s and the stakes were just as high then as they are now.

Nary has a week gone by without mention of the latest contretemps among the high tech industry titans. There’s been no cessation of hostilities during the holiday season. If anything, top tier companies have become even more aggressive about solidifying and extending their dominance in and out of their core competencies as 2010 comes to a close.

Thanks to everyone who responded to the independent, joint ITIC/Sunbelt Software survey on Windows 7, Desktop Infrastructure and Cloud Services deployment trends and issues. Please NOTE: no vendors sponsored this survey or in any way influenced the results.

Over 400 of you from 22 countries took time out of your busy schedules to respond to our poll.

Windows 7 is a winner!

As we noted in our previous blog, Windows 7 officially celebrates its 1st birthday, today — October 22nd. And there are plenty of reasons to celebrate. Yes, Windows 7 has sold over 240 million copies, to date making it the fastest selling OS in Microsoft’s (or any vendor’s) history. And yes, many of those sales can be attributed to pent-up demand because the overwhelming majority of the Windows installed base elected to remain on Windows XP and skip Vista. Admittedly, many organizations would opt to remain on Windows XP indefinitely if Microsoft was not ending support for the nearly 10 year old desktop OS. Those disclaimers aside, Windows 7′s success is no fluke.