The Article: Microsoft shuts down IT pro requests to allow IE virtualization.
I’ll say in addition to this from a perspective of someone caught up in this and having had conversations with Microsoft about this… While they are in fact drawing a line in the sand and saying Internet Explorer is an OS component (interesting, because I seem to remember a lawsuit about this years ago that they lost…), many in Microsoft know that the refusal to virtualize IE 6 is costing them. Big time.
I’m currently working with this issue directly in a corporation with 25,000+ users. The major holdup in adopting Windows 7? IE 6
Apparently (contain your shock, please), IE 6 happened to be the browser out when hundreds of web applications were created, web application that the company doesn’t really want to have to re-do, or doesn’t have the bandwidth to get them all done.
While we are moving forward with IE 8, the possibility that close to half of the staff could be cut off from working in certain programs is understandably unacceptable.
We are in the process of adding Citrix XenApp servers for the single purpose of running IE 6, because there is no other method Microsoft will approve. This presents several huge issues, not the least of which is Java. Obviously I’m a big fan of Citrix and XenApp, but there comes a point where you’re not improving your user experience- you’re just throwing paint on the wall and hoping for a Monet.
IMHO, Microsoft is making a huge mistake here and should have been the first to offer a standalone IE 6 package, using technology they already have (they bought SoftGrid several years ago).
It’s not as easy as just saying ‘we only support two revisions’ when IE 7 was so horrible, along with the rest of Vista. Microsoft needs to wake up and realize that the corporate world is not playing along, and their sales of Windows 7 and 2008 R2 are suffering because of it.
Had Vista and IE 7 been adopted by, well, anyone; this conversation wouldn’t even be required. I understand having certain standards, but there comes a point where you recognize you’ve made a mistake and own up to it and do whatever it takes to fix it in order to retain customer loyalty (one of the things I admire about Japanese companies, by the way). Many within Microsoft know their days on the top are dwindling fast- as ‘cloud based’ applications become more widespread, a thinner OS will be desirable, as it already is in phones and tablets. The desktop (and yes, the enterprise desktop) will be next.
The last line of the article is how I’ll end as well:
“Our stance is that there is customer demand for it, and we are urging Microsoft to listen to what customers want,” said Raj Mallempati, a VMware desktop products manager. “Customers want a way to move to Windows 7, and [application virtualization] gives them a way to do that.”
