PowerShell Adoption by Platform

I have always wondered how much is PowerShell adopted across various administrative tasks. Now I finally found the stats.
Windows Server and Active Directory are far ahead, with Windows Desktop being a runner-up, Exchange on distant 3rd and everything else far behind.

My take on the data:

• Server and AD management tasks are far ahead of everything else. Too bad the survey didn’t distinguish between the two.
• It is a bit surprising the desktops took number 2. My guess is that respondents just meant using PowerShell on their desktop for their personal needs. Despite existing 3rd-party solutions I doubt PowerShell v1 can be used that widely for mass desktop management. I think we will need to wait for v2 and remoting to see this taking off.
• Not surprisingly almost a 3rd of respondents are not using PowerShell for admin tasks at all. After all, there is some learning curve involved here and PowerShell is not yet available for any platform.
• Almost a quarter of PowerShell users employ it for Exchange 2007. A very good result! After all, Exchange 2007 was released not that long ago, and has just got its SP1.
• In general, it looks like platforms with no cmdlets available don’t really get PowerShell fans. .NET can be used to manage SQL and SharePoint – but look how much behind are they! Exchange 2003 can actually be managed with PowerShell, but there are no native cmdlets built-in – and as result PowerShell use is just 1.5%. Compare that to 23.4% Exchange 2007 got!
• I wonder why Operations Manager is relatively low. Less adopted than Exchange 2007? OpsMgr admins less willing to script? OpsMgr tasks not really requiring scripting and command-line use?

The survey was carried out by Quest Software and took place in the very end of December 2007 and early January 2008. It was promoted at PowerGUI.org, this blog, myITForum.com and a few other PowerShell blogs. About 200 people responded. The exact question was: “Select the systems you are currently managing with Windows PowerShell“.

Tags: Active Directory, Exchange, Exchange 2007, MOM, OpsMgr, PowerShell, SharePoint, desktop management
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