Microsoft on Thursday has announced its customers to stop using older versions of Internet Explorer (IE), including the most popular of them, that is IE8 within 18 months.
Microsoft software analysts, Michael Silver of Gartner, said “This is huge, IE has been one of the biggest inhibitors if not the biggest inhibitor preventing organizations from moving to Windows 7 and Windows 8. I’ve spoken to organizations that said they’d have deployed Windows 8 if they didn’t have to upgrade IE. It is another way Microsoft is trying to persuade, or force, organizations to keep current. For some organizations, like those in regulated industries, that’s difficult.”
According to latest figures, the browser is used only on 20 percent of PCs running an operating system around the world while there are only six percent of all web traffic.
From a blog post on Friday evening, the firm said, “only the most-recent version of Internet Explorer available for supported operating system will receive technical support and security updates.” Yesterday, the head of IE’s marketing said that after January 12, 2016, Microsoft wouldn’t support IE9 in any of the Windows except Vista, IE10 only on Windows server 2012, and IE11 just for Windows 7 and 8.1. Hence, IE7 and IE8 will not be supported completely in whatever OS they run on.
Roger Capriotti, leader of IE marketing, stated a number of reasons for this revolutionary change, including improved security, better compatibility with third-party and Microsoft’s Web-based application and services, like Office 365 and less fragmentation for Web app and site developers.
“Running a modern browser is more important than ever for the fastest, most-secure experience on the latest Web sites and services,” Capriotti wrote on Thursday in a long blog post.
An analysts with the research firm IDC, Al Hilwa, spotlighted on the security angle. “We have a situation where the security consequences of using outdated software is like putting enterprises in a slowly-heating pot,” Hilwa wrote in an email. “We are reaching a boiling point in terms of hacker intrusions and exploitation. The problem is changing, and software provisioning has to change with it.”
“This wasn’t a complete surprise. In the world of new efficiencies [at Microsoft], it didn’t shock me that they did this. They’re looking for ways to build better software faster,” Wes Miller said referring to CEO Satya Nadella’s.
People don’t understand that there are still quite a few companies that still use IE8 in their environment. I know for a fact as I work with these companies in my current position. It’s a huge endeavor to upgrade anything in large corporations–never mind the Internet browser. Many have custom built web applications that are coded to work in IE8. Upgrading to a new browser is months of re-coding, UAT, and deployment. As much as Microsoft would love to drop support of IE, the fact is they cannot. Too many large companies are still reliant upon IE8. The problem is many of these companies do not want to invest in the costs to upgrade any type of software. IT is usually the last place money goes in companies because the people making those decisions usually don’t know squat about IT.
Microsoft is getting behind on everything, they are still in the 1990’s mentality believing their company is the only one, but everybody knows is not so. The fact that they have to do so
many updates is really stupid.
They aren’t looking for ways to build better software faster. They are looking for ways to separate you from your money faster. Keep going, MS. The whole world will either be using Apples or using Chrome or Foxfire on their PCs.
…Firefox. I may be a stickler but please get the name right.
They could stop support for Windows 8 and nobody would care.
Who cares what MS wants? Many have stopped using IE and gone to Chrome or Firefox.