I talk a lot about software in this blog but most of the discussion is at the personal level: I tried this, I experimented with that. I hardly ever talk about what I use for doing my IBM business and more rarely still do I talk about IBM’s internal policies about software use. This entry is different, and gives you a bit of a view inside the company.
Like many individuals and members of organizations, IBMers use their browsers a lot for conducting business. Our desktop and laptop software environments have some common applications but also software specific to do our various jobs. And these jobs are varied, as there are about 400,000 IBM employees around the world.
Some of the software we all use shouldn’t surprise you since we make it, such as Lotus Notes, Lotus Sametime, and Lotus Symphony.
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.
While other browsers have come and gone, Firefox is now the gold standard for what an open, secure, and standards-compliant browser should be. We’ll continue to see this or that browser be faster or introduce new features, but then another will come along and be better still, including Firefox.
I think it was Firefox and its growth that reinvigorated the browser market as well as the web. That is, Firefox forced competitors to respond. Their software has gotten better and we have all benefited. We’ll see this again as Firefox continues to add even more support for HTML5.
So what does it mean for Firefox to be the default browser inside IBM? Any employee who is not now using Firefox will be strongly encouraged to use it as their default browser. All new computers will be provisioned with it. We will continue to strongly encourage our vendors who have browser-based software to fully support Firefox.
We’ll offer employee education and point our people to great online information, all of which will look wonderful in Firefox. IBM has contributed to the Firefox open source effort for many years and we’ll continue to do so.
There’s another reason we want to get as many of our employees using Firefox as soon as possible, and that is Cloud Computing. For the shift to the cloud to be successful, open standards must be used in the infrastructure, in the applications, and in the way people exchange data.
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 that should be part of IBM’s own internal transformation to significantly greater use of Cloud Computing. Examples of this already include Blue Insight, an internal cloud for business analytics, and LotusLive, for online collaboration.
It is not news that some IBM employees use Firefox. It is news that all IBM employees will be asked to use it as their default browser.
As you think about the browser you use at home and at work, consider the reasons we have stated for our move. It’s your choice, obviously, but Firefox is enterprise ready, and we’re ready to adopt it for our enterprise.
I agree with your view on Firefox. I made special note of this sentence “We will continue to strongly encourage our vendors who have browser-based software to fully support Firefox.” That is nice for vendors, but what about enforcing this with the IBM devdelopment community? We are still creating browser based software which requires IE.
Woah! great news. But why stopping halfways and not also standardizing on the equally awesome Thunderbird?
Would you be willing to share openly how you’re managing Firefox in the enterprise? Things like adding internal CAs to its certificate store, managing default security rules/settings, etc. are not controllable in the same way as for IE for example.
This control issue has been one hurdle companies have faced when contemplating the switch. Your solution/decision in this area would be a benefit to the community.
Thank you
Bob -
IBM presumably did alot of work to be able to support Firefox from an IT point of view (in terms of patch management, etc). Are there any plans to share that experience? We provide Firefox to a few pilot groups, but have issues getting patches distributed, particularly when users do not have administrative rights.
Glad to see the move. Chrome is good and all, but Firefox is stable, supported by more sites, and less prone to constant feature changes.
I been a Firefox user for years, and i have been liking it ever since, i’m glad IBM is moving to being its default browser. Keep up the good work Firefox.
This post was mentioned on WINARS ‘Firefox Now IBM’s Default Browser’ http://www.winars.com/software/mozilla-firefox-ibm-default-browser/
Great news Bob. Having IBM officially backing Firefox this way is a monumental endorsement that will ripple through the whole IT world.
With the clout IBM has this will force a lot of companies, not only the ones you work with, to put more efforts in making their products work and look great in Firefox.
Looking forward to see how this will unfold.
/thomas
This is a welcome sea change for the adoption of a faster, more secure, and leaner web browser. Huzzah and hooray!!!
What technologies (if any) will IBM be using to centrally configure/manage FireFox specific to IBM’s work environment? While Internet Explorer can be configured using Windows group policies, Mozilla does not seem to have anything similar for FireFox. I’m aware of FireFoxADM, but that project seems to have stagnated for more than a year now. The same goes for WetDog, which has not been updated to work with FireFox 3.6 or greater, and is no longer actively maintained.
This is really interessting – let me ask you some questions: how are yu going to deal with policies, updates etc.? As far as I know IE is the only browser that can be managed thru a central point (AD/SCCM/SMS) etc.?! What restrictions will there be when it comes to AddOns?
Thanks and greetings from Munich
J.
Hi there,
will you help in the development of Firefox? For example: the fourth version surely would use some help. It would be a investment in software used at IBM and – a very nice move for Open Source move.
Sincerely,
P. O.
Lots of comments have come in on this and I’ll start responding tomorrow.
I am sure other have asked but just in case. Did you consider chrome? I have used Firefox in the past but abandoned it when chrome came out. Chrome is super fast and did have have the memory issue that Firefox did at that time.
Great to see a company such as IBM making this move.
Good work, open source browsers are more steadily updated and provide a great future foundation for open source
Thank you SO much! I’m really exited and pleased to see this! I hope and pray many more companies see these key benefits and advantages. We need organisations and consumers to move forward into the 21st century and dump Internet Explorer and choose the future – standards based browsers like Firefox.
Thank you IBM for leading the way!
Just came to comment that your name is Robert Sutor and mine is Rob Suto.
…as everyone else has moved to Chrome.
Its great that such large organizations are finally embracing Mozilla technologies over the big commercial competitors – like Microsoft, Google, Apple etc. Firefox is a great product (not without faults I might add) but I’m confident that it will continue to get better wist time.
That’s good. Maybe other giant companies will follow suit? Also, I thought that one of the largest reasons why FF was adopted by large companies was because it lacked management tools. Did IBM roll their own tools or what?
If you want to see more about IBM improving its (internal) use of really good software, check out OCDC at IBM. I am running it now as my default for IBM business…
Thanks for a good report on FF at IBM!
I’d be interested in seeing how IBM is deploying firefox on such a large scale… will you guys release details on that?
Yeah i think that firefox is the most used web browser for now and it widely open that firefox can became the standard of web browser and web development
If you guys ever need any help with the Firefox customization (which is all my work), you know where to reach me :)
It’s a shame I’m not still at IBM to see this day.
Mike Kaply
The IBM Firefox Guy
Now we are waiting for M$ to response to such “insolent” decision :)
Hehe
good
why not google’s chrome ?
I strongly strongly applaud IBM’s choice. Firefox is way ahead of crappy old Internet Explorer and deserves more market share because of that. IBM is now promoting open source software and better browsing for all. GOOD JOB!
Thats a Real Good News !!! Firefox is the Best Browser in the whole of the World
Hi Bob,
This is a great move and it’s something undecided enterprise need. Now we can say, if IBM does it, why you can’t! They more-likely know what they are doing!
Thanks whole IBM Team for such as move and let’s look-forward for better future, where standard compliant browser will be a normal thing to have in the Enterprise.
open source is the way to go. Great news to hear from IBM and Google too (As google ditched MS operating Systems from its office). You are setting right trend. :)
This is fantastic news!
I am an ex-IBMer, and I always used to wonder about the inconsistency between IBM’s public statements about supporting open source software, and our internal policy of being dependent on softwares like Windows, MS Office and IE when so many alternatives are available. Firefox was the browser of my choice while I was at IBM, and used to hate it that a few w3 tools seemed to work only in IE.
I hope to return to IBM next year, and while my personal choice as a browser has shifted to Google Chrome, I love this move by IBM.
Now, what we need is a greater push for Linux within IBM! When can we expect that to happen?
Power to you!
Such steps are very important by major companies in IT to re-establish humanity’s faith in technology.
Since I also was an IBM employee this is not surprising news to me. IBM has some pretty cool software. No longer an IBMer, I am missing the BluePages, Sametime and Lotus Notes (Lotus Domino). IBM is the only company I know who really supported Firefox for many years. They redesigned their websites so the pages can be loaded using Firefox without any problems (no longer ‘IE optimized’ pages!)
@Anne Medar: a) IBM is using Lotus Notes. Well, Lotus Notes isn’t only an email program. It’s far more. When you only are using the email part then there are other email clients that will do similar or even better job b) My opinion regarding Thunderbird is, that it isn’t Enterprise ready. Automation within Thunderbird is to weak and there is no possibility for archiving emails.
Thunderbird out of the box has no calendar functionality. The filters (automation) aren’t really handy or usable.
Bob, what’s about IBM’s platform/desktop strategy? I heard some very interesting and surprising rumors
Very good decision, finally!
Note, I have a W3v8 theme (with the IBM W8 Intranet style) that I developed 3 years ago, but still maintain for Firefox. Check it out at:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6594/
I am no longer within IBM, but working for a very active IBM Business Partner Jibes, which is specialized in InfoSphere and IBM Mashup Center/sMash technology. For both, we would like to have support for Firefox for more InfoSphere products (such as MDM for PIM).
+1 thanks!
What about software/add-ons updates management? As far as I know, Firefox doesn’t allow a centralized management of new versions for a group of users. Will every user be in charge of its own updates? If so, do you think this is a good approach for security management in a company?
Sorry for my bad english :(
One word HORAAAAAY.
This is great. Probably we will soon see many mail and messenger plugins of Lotus Sametime and Lotus Mail getting developed for Firefox.
Regards,
Devesh
In my company IT turns a blind eye towards Firefox, so that users who install it themselves also have the possibility to OK all the automatic updates.
All our ‘official’ software is scripted and centrally managed. With the frequency and sometimes urgency of the Firefox updates, this scripting is a costly (time and money) barrier against placing Firefox in our IT managed software pool.
How does IBM handle this?
IE is a non-starter for me. It won’t even run on any of my computers, all of which run Linux.
Great news from IBM. It deserves a tweet ;-)
Have a nice weekend, Jaume.
Hmm, nice but what about central management, how they will control browser addons that users install on their computers ? What’s about updates, they will rely on automatic updates from mozilla site or will they build they own server and provide their own custom build ?
@Anne Medar : Because Thunderbird does not even scratch the surface of what Lotus Notes is capable of, the database access capability that it offers, It is way more than just an email client.
Thats really cool, because any browser is better than IE, which is an absolute nightmare for web developers. Although, I do believe that Chrome is much faster and more beautiful then all the other browsers.
- Dmitriy Zasyatkin (Long-time Firefox Fan)
Will you also consider bundling NoScript as a very strongly suggested extension?
I agree it makes browsing a bit more intricate at first, but some training and some time spent using it should lead to an even safer Firefox browsing experience IMHO.
Once upon a time Netscape was the king of the hill. Then came Windows 95 with Explorer “built” into it and took over. Netscape became Mozilla, and mozilla was transform into Firefox… Firefox will not become a monopoly, but will ensure that no proprietary company with proprietary standards will ever again dominate the net browsing field. Good job and awesome victory for the Open Source community!
this is the kindest, gentlest comments section I’ve ever read. Everybody here loves FF! IMO, it’s fine, but the giant company I work for uses IE (7 & 8), even tho’ all our software development has been outsourced to IBM. the browser I use at home is IE8. I have tried to love FF, but there’s just no compelling connection there.
I’m in the process of moderating the comments. For those who posed very specific questions, I’ll be having someone from our CIO’s office respond.
For those of you from IBM who have asked questions, please see the w3 news story that was posted yesterday. There’s a tremendous amount of information there, including what we’re doing for the few remaining problematic browser-based applications, what are the recommended extensions, and so forth. I’m not going to otherwise have that discussion here.
I’m John Walicki from the IBM I/T organization and lead the Firefox Adoption program and our Browser Independence strategy. Several comments have asked how IBM manages hundreds of thousands of Firefox enabled workstations.
The IBM internal IT organization uses a Firefox Add-on called the Client Customization Kit (CCK) to manage preferences, a standard set of corporate bookmarks, default extensions, and configuration parameters. We also preload internal search engines for IBM intranet search and the employee directory. Automatic security updates are handled through the builtin Firefox software update facility so that our employees are protected within hours of an security alert. Major updates are disabled by default and can be controlled and provisioned centrally through the IBM CCK management after extensive internal testing.
CCK was originally written by Mike Kaply when he was at IBM and IBM donated it as open source to Mozilla.
Also see: