Don't Go Writing Internet Explorer's Obituary in the Enterprise

Posted 01/13/2010 at 6:06am | by Paul Lilly

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Those who think IE's time in the enterprise is numbered should think again, says a Devil Mountain Software researcher, who notes that more than 80 percent of the company's 22,000 PCs run Microsoft's browser during the workday.

"The idea that IE will go away is far fetched," said Craig Barth, CTO at Devil Mountain. "People who say those kinds of things simply don't have a grasp on the internal organization of enterprises, or the bureaucracy of companies. Until enterprises flush out the internal applications that rely on IE, that use unsupported and undocumented layout commands, IE sin't goin anywhere. And those dinosaur applications are almost impossible to get rid of."

Barth may have a point, but there's also no doubt there's been a major shift in the past several years. Some data suggests that IE has been steadily declining from its share high of 95 percent in 2004. According to Net Applications, IE has fallen some 4.5 points in the last 18 weeks of 2009 before hitting a new low of 63 percent.

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