IBM VP Bob Sutor talks about why IBM is moving it’s 400,000 world-wide employees to Firefox on his blog.
We’re officially adding a new piece of software to the list of default common applications we expect employees to use, and that’s the Mozilla Firefox browser.
Firefox has been around for years, of course. Today we already have thousands of employees using it on Linux, Mac, and Windows laptops and desktops, but we’re going to be adding thousands more users to the rolls.
Some of us started using it because it was new and fast and cool. I tried it for those reasons, but I still use it for the following ones:
- 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.
Many of you have probably heard your tech-minded friend or relative try and talk you into moving from IE to Firefox in the past. The pain of installing and learning new software or the inability to choose what software runs on your work computer have kept you from bothering.
No one doubts that there is a cost to switching software in the time and effort required to get used to the new application. Multiply that effort by 400k and you might never consider it. However, IBM has decided that the cost of moving their employees to Firefox is worth the effort.
Firefox is one of the leading browsers in supporting and advocating open internet standards. If you’re not convinced to at least give Firefox a chance I’ll close with another quote from Bob Sutor:
The longstanding commitment of Mozilla to open standards and the quality of the implementation of them in Firefox gives us confidence that this is a solid, modern platform…
Visit Firefox.com to download Firefox.
