IBM"s Vice President of Open Source, Bob Sutor, has made a blog post regarding the company"s stance on web browsers. The company will be shifting to Mozilla Firefox as their browser of choice. This move will affect around 400,000 employees worldwide. As the new browser of IBM, Firefox will be pre-loaded as the default browser on all new computers. Current users will be encouraged to adopt it as well. As part of the push, IBM is also asking its vendors to develop with the fiery little fox in mind and to ensure that all of their web apps are fully compatible with it.
There are many reasons for the switch. Not only do thousands of IBM employees already use Firefox, but Sutor notes that Firefox is the "gold standard for what an open, secure, and standards-compliant browser should be." He also notes that other browsers, which are faster or have newer features, will continue to hit the market. It"s just the way of the world. In the end though, Firefox has made it through it all and is the one browser responsible for other browsers stepping up their game. He firmly believes that Firefox will continue to hold its own in the browser wars.
Besides the fact that Firefox is fast, it also runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows, allowing the company to use the same browser across all of their machines. Cloud computing is also a driving force in the choose to use an open standards browser. Sutor mentions his own personal reasons as to why users should be flocking to Firefox (below is a direct quote):
- Firefox is stunningly standards compliant, and interoperability via open standards is key to IBM’s strategy.
- Firefox is open source and its development schedule is managed by a development community not beholden to one commercial entity.
- Firefox is secure and an international community of experts continues to develop and maintain it.
- Firefox is extensible and can be customized for particular applications and organizations, like IBM.
- Firefox is innovative and has forced the hand of browsers that came before and after it to add and improve speed and function.
To give Mozilla Firefox a try, visit www.firefox.com. The current version is 3.6.6. Firefox 4 will soon hit its first beta release and promises a new and improved user interface, as well as many new features.