Analysts: IE entrenched in the enterprise

Alternative browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and may be aimed at toppling Microsoft's reign, but analysts say Internet Explorer's "overwhelming dominance" in the workplace will be difficult to defeat.

The main reason for the Microsoft browser's seemingly stranglehold position is the near ubiquity of Microsoft products used in enterprises today.

Ray Valdes, Gartner's research vice president, said in an interview with ZDNet Asia: "Due to longstanding accumulations of dependencies, most enterprises will find it difficult or unfeasible to switch from Internet Explorer to an alternative browser, such as Firefox, Opera, or Safari."

Valdes said it would be "difficult, if not impossible" for the average organization to abandon IE in favor of these alternative browsers. He noted that many software systems and applications are dependent on IE's HTML rendering engine embedded into other Microsoft applications, such as e-mail client Microsoft Outlook.

Another driving aspect is IE's administrative functions that allow enterprises to centrally manage and administer the browser, Valdes added. "Unlike Firefox, Microsoft provides mechanisms that meet this requirement, such as group policy objects and the Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK).

"A key enterprise requirement is the ability to centrally manage and administer the browser...As a result, for many organizations, abandoning IE and replacing it with another browser is unrealistic," he said.

Through these management tools, for example, companies can more efficiently control user access and better manage security policies related to Web browsing.

According to IDC, IE's dominance is also perpetuated by the rest of the IT industry, creating a cyclical relationship.

Because IE currently has the dominant market share, makers of Web sites, software applications, and other components that are accessible via a Web browser will place the highest priority on ensuring their products support IE, Mark Levitt, IDC's program vice president for collaboration and enterprise 2.0 strategies, told ZDNet Asia.

While new features offered in Firefox or Chrome could help propel either browser's position, if they showed "sufficient advantages over IE," Levitt said Microsoft would unlikely give the competition enough time to close the gap before it releases similar features for IE.

Victoria Ho of ZDNet Asia reported from Singapore.

[Arrgster]

Third party vendors are a big problem. I have several situations where a company has written their interfaces around IE. I use firefox for as much as I can, but I am forced to use IE every once in a while because of what I consider bad coding from not adhering to standards.

[Sumatra-Bosch]

Shocking.

[sfotoord]

This article completely misses the real issue which is that there is no well defined business value to switching browsers in the enterprise. Many companies have barely upgraded versions of IE.

[Mr. Dee]

Its a different story outside the Enterprise though. I still use IE because a lot of the services I use are Windows Live related and its hard working with Windows Live ID between IE and Firefox. But apart from that, everything else is Firefox. IE is such a molasses like browser, it takes forever to render pages on my dial up connection. Firefox does that in reasonable time. I can understand IE's dominance though, Microsoft has cemented that browser, it will never die, it cannot be obliterated. I will admit, when I am on a fast connection I preferably use it. I personally have not seen a major improvement in IE 8 beta 2, but does seem snappier especially where that horrendous phishing filter is concerned.

[iBuzz]

In many cases, internal enterprise web sites and apps don't even work on IE 7! Therefore, companies are forced to stay with IE 6. And, ironically for Microsoft, that locks them into Windows XP as well, since IE 6 does not run on Vista.

Oh, what a tangled web we unleash when we attempt to embrace, extend, and extinguish.

[TxTom21]

Another aspect of this issue is the support industry for small business. The 'tech guy' for my church refuses to recommend and will remove (if not monitored) Firefox, Thunderbird, Safari, OpenOffice and a number of other apps from office computers and proclaim them as 'untested and untrustworthy' and the pastor is pretty uninformed on the issue and goes along with it.

What this guy is doing is guaranteeing himself business in the future with the virus/malware/spyware attacks that will inevitably take place.

I will eventually get the work for myself since I don't charge them for my services (the tech guy is also a member of the same church, but he's not willing to donate his services) and they will finally realize that I'm not blowing smoke about the security issues.

[alenas]

Come on stop complaining about IE...it works well, does not crash (if you do not have dodgy add-ons) and shows every website on the planet right. It is not about standards - it is about user experience.
I like Opera and Chrome (do not like Firefox much - overated in my opinion). But there are plenty of websites that do no show right with Opera or Chrome - and it is not in a users interest to be switching between browsers, when user knows that with IE he will see content the way it suppose to look.

[JuggerNaut]

Actually IE does not show every website on the planet right (IE only tries to properly render poor written code). If a website is written in strict web standard code, it will break in IE (and what will look good in IE 7 will look horrible in IE6 and vice versa). The best practice (from my experience) has been to write your website in web standard code that will work well in Firefox, Safari and Opera and hack in your exceptions for IE. It's a lot easier than to write a website in non web standard code and try to fix it for other (more) web standard browsers out as it takes a lot more work and not worth the hassle. And the days of supporting only one web browser is just plain STUPID!

[ppgreat]

So the majority of businesses are average or mediocre?

[ranpha]

Want to know why IE rules in enterprises? Lack of support for Group Policy Object and Active Directory integration, plus no centralized update system (if a new version of Firefox is out, no sane system admin will allow 500 computers with Firefox to connect to the Internet for upgrades). System admins around the world over has been screaming for these features for so long, yet Mozilla/Opera/Apple/whatever thinks that faster Javascript engine will entice people who uses IE in the enterprise to switch?

[JuggerNaut]

Where I work, Mozilla Firefox is standard issue and most (developed) in-house apps we use are only supported on Mozilla Firefox.