Do you have an IE6 Exit Strategy?
Just a thought. If you’re one of those lumbering corporations locked into IE6 through software or IT lock-in or even by the personal choice of a managing director – do you have an IE6 exit strategy? Seriously, it doesn’t matter how many times you say that you’re locked into IE6 the finite life of a browser is a business reality you need to contend with… unless you’re saying in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years you’re going to be running IE6. No, didn’t think so. You need an exit strategy.
Apparently Google are suggesting GMail users move away from IE6 as an unsupported browser to either Firefox or Chrome. IE6 was released on August 12, 2001. End of story.
What businesses need to understand is that this issue will not perpetually disappear behind the argument that this is too expensive to deal with, or because it’s difficult. Yes you’re locked into IE6, but that’s because you made an understandable business error that had a relatively short term view. How were you to know IE6 would become an industry bugbear and other vendors would take over that market space. Yes IE6 is still large on the browser stats of most websites – but it’s going to fail more often and more significantly and eventually it’ll be like hearing about a business still running Netscape 4.7. First shock, then laughter.
My advice for organisations at the beginning of 2009 – sit down and discuss the white elephant. Figure out your IE6 exit strategy. If it’s not this year, will it be next? Or the year after? How will you extricate yourself from your proprietary IE6 software solutions? Time to earn the big dollars, right?
January 5th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
This choice shouldn’t be a tough call for most businesses anymore right?! There’s very little excuse to still be using IE6 at the start of 2009. Good prompt Steven.
Is it still an issue in Taz and Australia? I’m generalising a bit – but I think UK businesses have largely moved on to IE7 by default already.
January 6th, 2009 at 6:21 am
Hi Matt, I don’t have any handy statistics on this but the real problem a lot of businesses have is they bought into the idea that their company used IE6 for browsing so they got their individual software / intranet solutions created as IE specific. So the guys / girls I’m talking about have been avoiding a strategic management issue – how to extricate themselves from the expensive IE6 dilemma. This was a lot of companies, I recall several episodes of Boagworld for example where Marcus Lillington mentioned visiting companies still locked into IE6 through their internal software.
It’s like a house of cards, not as simple as just moving browsers for these businesses – usually the larger businesses by the way. Change browser and have their internal applications fail? Or upgrade applications first – but that would mean staggering two browsers. And with large internal training costs potential in their organisations for this newer non-IE6 software they’ve commissioned, it gets too big to look at.
So a bunch of organisations have been traditionally avoiding the issue as too hard, or their managers and general managers aren’t IT and when it comes to the crunch they just say the IT department have no budget to do it… carry on as usual.
Strategically speaking these companies should be looking at least at the 5 year mark – where will they be in 5 years? That’s the part where tough expensive decisions are faced by those “locked into” IE6 specific solutions. Remember, a lot of those applications used IE6 specific code… which they thought at the time would be cheaper and more viable than coding for other browsers.
January 6th, 2009 at 7:05 am
One strategy that seems to be common is that of limited multiple browser support for minor applications and internet use – Firefox etc… which is fine, but until there is a strategic plan to extricate from the IE6 software there really isn’t a plan per se. And businesses need plans… I guess that’s what I’m getting at.
January 6th, 2009 at 7:52 am
the good news at where I work(gov agency) is that they’re rolling out IE7 install this month, finally.
the bad news? oh well, i’ll let u know when ie7 deploys… lol. i can hear screams already from designer/programmers. a lot of legacy web apps built for ie6…
January 6th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
ha ha yes that’s pretty much the experience I perceived with the public sector here… whereas managers should have had this nailed way back from a strategic level knowing exactly which pieces of software were likely to fail and having contingency plans. Way before accounting calls and asks politely why the time reports are getting confused or accounting finds adding causes all right hand zeros to disappear.
The few times I’ve been in a position to broach the subject I’ve had a hand raised and told “don’t go there”. But we know, between us, that it’s not as simple as just declaring IE7 as the norm in any business then upgrading every machine on the weekend. Come monday… ouch. But a lot of that should have been planned for. It’s a strategic management issue (mostly strategic managers know zip about IT or web lol)…
Hopefully you’ll have a Y2K experience – nothing to report. But it’s probably unlikely if the software is written specifically for IE6 and is pretty old. And if nobody plans to recommission new software.
January 11th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
[...] Do You Have an IE6 Exit Strategy? – It’s been a while since I wrote my breakup letter to IE6. It seems IE6 is one of those psycho ex-girlfriends who keeps coming back to haunt me. Steven wrote a great article that I can relate to. Most gov/corporates still use IE6 to support legacy applications. [...]