Why the web platform and browsers are central to the enterprise
The days of desktop-based and client-based applications dominating the enterprise are behind us. Increasingly, enterprise-level applications do not run locally as clients; rather, they are accessed via a web browser. Financial, supply chain, manufacturing, and customer relationship management (CRM) applications, in addition to web-hosted applications and many applications developed in-house, are written to be accessed over a network or the Internet via a browser.
This access makes deploying and updating enterprise-level applications easier than it was in the past. Instead of updating hundreds or thousands of clients, the IT staff just needs to update the application on servers to have the latest version immediately available to everyone in the enterprise via a browser.
As mesh computing and cloud computing become ubiquitous, the browser will become even more important. It is the front end to applications that run in the cloud.
The Web browser is no longer an isolated application used solely to access the Internet. Instead, it is a strategic part of the IT infrastructure and a universal front end to enterprise-level applications, software developed in-house, internal company portals, dashboards, and external portals for interacting with clients, suppliers, and business partners.
To accomplish all of these roles, a browser needs to be enterprise-ready: highly secure, reliable, widely compatible with existing applications, easy to deploy and manage, and with a robust feature set that an enterprise setting requires.
Windows Internet Explorer 8 provides enterprises with the front-end interface today for their applications, portals, and dashboards of the future. Continue reading about this topic in more detail in the white paper Future Foundation: A More Secure, Stable, and Reliable Browser to Power Enterprise Productivity.