Microsoft Exploits Firefox 4 Furor

The retirement of Firefox 4 isn’t sitting well with corporate IT and a Microsoft executive made sure to capitalize upon the situation by pleading the case for Internet Explorer in the enterprise yesterday.

I think I speak for everyone on the IE team when I say we’d like the opportunity to win back your business. We’ve got a great solution for corporate customers with both IE8 and IE9, and believe we could help you address the challenges you’re currently facing. - Ari Bixhorn, director of IE at Microsoft

The comment was addressed to John Walicki, the manager of workplace and mobility in the office of IBM’s CIO. Earlier on Thursday, Walicki and others had voiced their displeasure with Mozilla’s decision to retire Firefox 4 from security support when it launched the new Firefox 5 this week.

Although I’m in no position to question a competitor’s approach to customer engagement and support, I did want to take the opportunity to clarify the Internet Explorer team’s commitment to, and support for, our corporate customers. Enterprises have always been, and will always be, an important focus of ours. – Ari Bixhorn, director of IE at Microsoft

Microsoft was quick to confront IBM with their support, especially in the light of Mozilla seemingly not caring much for enterprises.

Years ago, we didn’t have the resources to solve the enterprise support problem. Today, I argue, we shouldn’t care even if we do have the resources because of the cost benefit trade. A minute spent making a corporate user happy can better be spent making many regular users happy. I’d much rather Mozilla spending its limited resources looking out for the billions of users that don’t have enterprise support systems already taking care of them. – Asa Dotzler, director of Firefox