- December 16, 2010 6:45 am
Since Chrome’s release, getting it to work (or even install) in an uber secure business setting was hard enough. Between proxies, firewalls, and administrator privileges, installing said browser on such a machine is near impossible with the local IT department’s grace. Compounding the issue is the fact that Chrome’s main installer is a web one meaning it’s not all that conducive to a large company rollout. But that changes today.
Announced today via the company’s blog, Google product manager, Glenn Wilson, and software engineer, Daniel Clifford, had the following to say:
Today, we’re announcing that Chrome offers controls that enable IT administrators to easily configure and deploy the browser on Windows, Mac, and Linux according to their business requirements…”
“We’ve also added support for managed group policy with a list of policies and a set of templates that allow administrators to easily customize browser settings to manage security and privacy,”
The new .msi installer method of installing Chrome will give picky IT departments the necessary means in which to customize and secure Google’s browser with standard tools of the trade. Of course, now you have to convince the IT department that merely sitting by and “making do” with IE 6 or 7 isn’t going to fly, and that you need a browser that’s actually useful.
Good luck.
- February 22, 2010 5:03 am
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time criticizing Internet Explorer 6′s continued lingering in the public sector. For consumers, IE6 is at the very bottom of the totem pole of relevance. The corporate sector however, is an entirely different story. My personal opinion was that the reason for the reliance on old software and technology was simply because of legacy hardware and software dependent on the outdated browser. Well, I was right — partially. There’s actually several good reasons as highlighted by Esther Schindler in her article: “Why You Can’t Pry IE6 Out of Their Cold Dead Hands”. Now before you start jumping on this as another anti-IE6 rant, take note that this is actually a well laid out explanation.
So why exactly do businesses stick with IE6?
- Companies simply don’t know, or don’t feel like upgrading.
- One or two company dependent programs hinder upgrades.
- “Why fix it if it isn’t broken?”
- “User control”: Most popular sites these days (ie: Facebook and YouTube) rely on modern web browsers to work properly. Why spend extra money upgrading software and paying for web filtering software on top of it when a broken, standards deficient browser does all of the work for you?
When you sit down and think about it, the reasons above make sense. Though at some point, relying on outdated IT equipment will come back to bite you. Whether it be in the form of greater upgrade costs when the company is finally doing a massive upgrade or a catastrophic hardware/software failure, staying complacent with old junk just isn’t a good idea.
So do I have more respect for the companies who do hold off for such reasons as highlighted above? No. Regardless if it’s a decision of the individual company or because of a 3rd party program developer that refuses to upgrade and support newer browsers, it all comes down to cheap and/or lazy people. Update or whither out of existence.
Read the full article at IT Expert Voice
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Yes folks, Verizon will be getting not one but two variations of the Tour 9630 on July 12th. Now before you pour gasoline all over the yard and light it in celebration, you may want to know that the variation is more business centric and really means absolutely nothing for you, the crack addicted end user. The difference between the two variations revolves around the camera — one model will have it while one won’t. Pretty basic and primative stuff. For a little while, once RIM dipped their toes in the camera phone waters, every phone started appearing with cameras built in. In the business world, cameras are a no no. While you can disable said feature with various security policies, the outright lack of a camera all together will surely put those pesky business users at ease. What a rollercoaster of a ride your emotions are going through.
Source: Into Mobile, CrackBerry
IT departments are long known for not being on top of and grasping the latest in technology. This fact is no surprise. They like to take the careful and more reserved approach, instead waiting months to years before upgrading hundreds of computers’ operating systems as the effects of incompatibilities can be extremely costly and time consuming to fix bring production to a standstill and even putting the company out of business as a result of the shut down. Now of course, a company shutting down because of an OS upgrade failure is an extreme failure. (Perhaps we would have seen more of this if Vista had been more widely adopted). So how long will big businesses wait to make the move to 7?
