I understand, but it seems to me that if corporations change their standard to something like Chrome or Firefox, then they will have less maintenance costs in the long run. I think it's easier and more cost effective to deploy the latest version of Firefox than it is to:
a. purchase new hardware for the latest OS from Microsoft,
b. Get all the OS images ready to deploy,
c. Train staff to use all the new applications that have changed UIs due to older versions of the software not working well on the new OS.
Not only this, but as I've said ad nauseum, development costs should reduce when you use something that is updated as often to the latest standard as Chrome and Firefox.
Many companies use custom applications that simply don't work in other browsers. A browser like Chrome or Firefox is not appealing to companies who don't want to have to worry about a new version coming out every couple of months and having to constantly test their application to make sure it still works.
This argument is flawed. There are really only two types of custom apps that you are referring to: apps that rely on ActiveX controls, and apps that use nonstandard eventing and DOM APIs, as well as bugs built into Internet Explorer.
In each case you have a problem: those who use ActiveX will eventually find a total lack of support and updates for these apps, and those apps that rely on non-standard behaviour risk getting broken in even minor updates. Not to mention there will come a time when Microsoft will completely stop supporting the browser version the app is relying on, even for security updates.
As has been pointed out by someone else, Firefox has special long term updates for corporations in restricted environments, so it's not a huge concern in terms of lots of updates being applied every few months.
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