One point from my previous post on .NET's market share was, "Enterprise revenue (as a measure of company size) was not a limiting factor in .NET's popularity." We have seen this in practice this year, as two clients of ours have been start-up companies that were building social networking sites. In both cases, their desire to build an exciting and scalable application was tempered with keeping costs in line, meeting tight schedules, and sticking to their budget. In both cases Syrinx was competing against other development organizations that worked with Open Srouce architectures. The old adage that "open source lets you get to market faster/cheaper" clearly does not apply, as we were able to be very competitive with a .NET-based solution. With development cycles measured in weeks, we were able to build large amounts of functionality, and deliver on-time and on-budget. If we can tie with an Open Source solution on those factors, we get the edge when you factor in scalability, support, and available development talent.
A recent study from Info-Tech Research Group noted that .NET is about a 2:1 favorite over Java for enterprise development
"Info-Tech's research identified that almost half (49 percent) of all
enterprises focus primarily on .NET with an additional 12 percent focused
exclusively on .NET. That is in comparison to only 20 percent of
enterprises that focus primarily on Java with a mere additional 3 percent
that standardize solely on it."
More: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/11-28-2007/0004712963&EDATE=