Why do most IT managers insist on installing IE on corporate PCs and
lock down such PCs so that no other browser software may be installed?

With all the bugs and viruses and spyware that IE is vulnerable to,
what business decision or advantage does IE provide over other
browsers? Such as Firefox or Opera which are free and more secure and
considering Microsoft provides almost no additional support for IE

I'm looking for a serious answer as to what motivates such business
decisions and not becuase "it managers are idiots" or somesuch.

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Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 10 May 2006 13:13 PDT

geeteq...

I can't say for sure, but I suspect it's simply because techs who
are hired are proficient in the operating system, which includes
IE, and that it's easier to update IE, from an admin stance, along
with Windows Update (now Microsoft Update), whereas Firefox, Opera
and other independents offer auto-updates which depend on users for
initiation and completion.

My experience is that IT departments want to be able to roll out
updates from their end, independent of the potentially ill-fated
involvement of relatively uninformed end users.

Let me know what you think...

sublime1-ga

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Clarification of Question by geeteq-ga on 11 May 2006 09:50 PDT

I think there could be multiple answers to this.

1) The status quo
2) as hammer-ga commented, a lot of developers use IE as part of their
development process which is obiously a core component of the MS dev
toolchain and the fact that IE is ubiquitous on Windows based PCs,
brings us back to point 1.
3) Marketing to IT managers and CIOs

Am I missing something...?

So this being said, let me switch this around a bit, assuming all
features are up to par, is there any reason why alternative browsers
wouldn't be suited for a corporate environment (appart from
application compatibility, discussed above)?

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Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 11 May 2006 11:50 PDT

geeteq...

Aside from user involvement with updates, which I mentioned earlier,
the main reason I can think of is that many sites are still using
web design which only looks right in IE, and is virtually unreadable
in some other browsers.

Take a look at this business home page, e.g., which came from another
question I was reading yesterday:
http://www.ultraguards.com/

While it looks okay in Opera and IE, in Mozilla or Firefox, the list
on the right and other text is cut off at the bottom.

I commonly use Mozilla for researching questions here, and run into
this issue several times a day.

And except on certain occasions, Opera is not free.

sublime1-ga

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Clarification of Question by geeteq-ga on 16 May 2006 11:24 PDT

allright, you wanna wrap it up?

geeteq...

As you wish...  : )

Thanks for confirming my work as your answer. I'll repost it
here for the sake of future readers.

------------------------------------------------------------

I can't say for sure, but I suspect it's simply because techs who
are hired are proficient in the operating system, which includes
IE, and that it's easier to update IE, from an admin stance, along
with Windows Update (now Microsoft Update), whereas Firefox, Opera
and other independents offer auto-updates which depend on users for
initiation and completion.

My experience is that IT departments want to be able to roll out
updates from their end, independent of the potentially ill-fated
involvement of relatively uninformed end users.

---

Aside from user involvement with updates, which I mentioned earlier,
the main reason I can think of is that many sites are still using
web design which only looks right in IE, and is virtually unreadable
in some other browsers.

Take a look at this business home page, e.g., which came from another
question I was reading yesterday:
http://www.ultraguards.com/

While it looks okay in Opera and IE, in Mozilla or Firefox, the list
on the right and other text is cut off at the bottom.

I commonly use Mozilla for researching questions here, and run into
this issue several times a day.

And except on certain occasions, Opera is not free.

---

And the comments made by others are certainly pertinent to the 
question - especially hammer-ga's remark about integrated web
components in other programs.

sublime1-ga

Also, there are a number of programs that will not run unless a
particular version of IE is present because they use an integrated web
component that needs to have IE on the system. QuickBooks Pro 2006 is
an example of such a program.

- Hammer

Extracting one product from the MS Office bundle and replacing it with
another won't get past most beancounters - it's a financial uplift for
no apparent bottom line benefit (even if the product replacement is
superior and requires less support, etc, those are soft benefits to
finance).

As an IT manager/director of 15 years, every day has enough challenges
that you don't go looking for trouble like "hey, let's roll out
replacement for IE - that'll add to the corporate competitive edge and
get us kudos from the user community".

phil,

tho this is probably not the right place for this discussion, I tend
to disagree with you, you are right that there is an initial capital
expense of integrating a different solution and a marginal operating
expense of maintaining it, wouldn't the benefits justify it? (less
viruses, crashes, security issues, etc). Then again I might be
wrong...