While Firefox offers scads of benefits there are lots of reasons why enterprises might think twice before deploying the platform. Here are some problems pointed out by Mike Kaply, Yuriy Krylov, and friends. See the posts for suggestions as to how to address some of those issues. Much of this content will become a sort of working plan for the Enterprise Working Group
1. Release lifecycle is too short. Mozilla only supports previous Firefox version for six months after the next release is too short for many large enterprises. Most large organizations only deploy new software once or twice a year, so half the support period could well be wasted if deployed at the wrong time of year. One year support after the release of the new version is critical.
2. Enterprise level phone support is missing
3. The business case for switching to Firefox is far from obvious.
4. Compatibility with many third-party applications remains a problem.
5. Intranet application compatibility is its own challenge. Often internally developed applications will take years to write and then are incompatible with new browsers.
6. Better Active Directory and Microsoft installer support is needed.
7. Better forms support. Mozilla this week was rumored to have cut off support for Xforms. (Can anybody verify?)
8. No easy way to enforce corporate restrictions around information sharing between departments and yet share bookmarks.
9. No easy way to synchronizing bookmarks across multiple browsers.
And two others from a great post by Yuriy:
10. Enterprise Settings Management -
- How do we flip a setting on every Desktop in the event of a vulnerability?
- How do we prevent users from altering settings that are deemed risky?
- How can we enable and lock Security Zone-like implementation in Firefox
11. Granular Addon Management -
- How can we prevent a user from installing or uninstalling an extension without having to compile extensions into the browser itself?
- How do we internalize extension repositories so we can "Bless" extensions before our users get to them?
- How can we disable an extension or plugin on all desktops in the event of an emergency?
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