For many, the browser the most important and most used software they have. This is because the browser has gone from being a tool to display static Web pages to be a platform to run applications of many kinds.
Also at the workplace, many people today must use a browser to perform their work. Then it is of course important that the employee can access the best tool. Yesterday, announced Robert S. Sutor, IBM's manager of open source and Linux, the company now add Firefox to the list of default applications as it is expected that the IBM employees use.
According to Sutor, there are already many of its 400 000 employees who use Firefox, but the desire is that as many as possible going over to Firefox.
It is, according to Sutor several reasons why the company chose to go for Firefox. Among the most important is support for open standards, which is very important also in IBM's strategy.
Another important factor for IBM is that Firefox is open source and that the development is managed by a community and not a commercial entity.
Sutor also mentions security, expansion opportunities and options to customize Firefox to certain applications and organizations.
- Firefox is innovative and has forced both older and newer browser products to add and improve the speed and functionality. While other browsers have come and gone, Firefox is now the gold standard for what an open, secure and permissive standard browser should be. We will continue to see that other browsers will be faster or introduce new functionality, but then another to hurry up and get even better, including Firefox, type Sutor.
From what Sutor, it seems that it is relatively free of many of IBM choosing web browser, even if the company is now choosing to standardize on Firefox. The company will however make it easy to select your browser from Mozilla.
- All new computers IBM uses, will be shipped with Firefox. We will continue to strongly encourage our suppliers who have browser-based software, to support Firefox fully Sutor writes.
- Another reason why we want as many as possible of our staff uses Firefox as quickly as possible, the network cloud. The transition to this cloud to be successful, open standards will be used in the infrastructure, the applications and the way people exchange data, write Sutor, who concludes that Firefox is "enterprise ready".
