Last week ahead of its Inspire 2019 conference, Microsoft announced that its new Chromium-based Edge browser is ready for enterprise testing, saying little more as to why. The news did come a day after we discovered that the recently announced IE Mode now works.
Today, Microsoft published a blog post outlining some of those key business features, along with what's coming soon for enterprises. The first couple of things that the firm mentioned were fairly obvious. Most importantly, the team said that fundamentals like being supported across platforms and being compatible with the modern web come first. And of course, there's IE Mode, which lets you open websites in Internet Explorer right within a new tab in Edge.
There's also support for Group Policies, and you can actually download policy templates from the Edge Insider enterprise site. You can also get offline deployment packages in MSI or PKG formats for Windows and macOS, respectively. Group Policies will let IT admins control updates, pausing them on a specific version. Edge will also support Mobile Device Management through Intune or third-party products.
Security is obviously a big thing when it comes to businesses. One thing that Microsoft will be including is Microsoft Defender SmartScreen, which is already included in current Edge. Coming soon is Application Guard, Azure AD Conditional Access, and Microsoft Information Protection. The company also pointed out security features in Chromium like sandboxing and site isolation.
And of course, you can sign into Edge with your Azure AD account. Microsoft also pointed out that it's bringing support for Microsoft Search, which will let you search within your organization right from the URL bar.
Right now, Microsoft wants businesses to use the Dev branch, although it's still unclear when the Beta branch will arrive.
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