Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 now available for official download

Web browser launch

Enterprises tell us that they are most concerned with web application compatibility issues

Microsoft’s new-look web browser is now available to download following its public preview last year. Among its features, IE9 boasts hardware acceleration and better virus detection, but is it the whole nine yards?

There has been much speculation about the release of IE9, and along with IE8, there have been some concerns that some web apps simply won’t run under it. To establish the scale of these concerns, application compatibility specialists, App-DNA conducted research with 100 enterprise users, and found that more than 50 per cent of respondents cited web application compatibility as being a potential blocker for rolling out desktop applications.

Paul Schnell, CTO for App-DNA summarises the main issues enterprises face: “Enterprises tell us that they are most concerned with web application compatibility issues like non-functional web pages, pages not rendering correctly, missing or broken plug-ins like ActiveX controls and broken links.

Interestingly, when we ask which are most predominant, the order is the same – non-functional pages, pages not rendering correctly, missing or broken plug-ins and broken links. So, the issues enterprises are seeing with commercial applications – and their home grown applications as well – are ranked the same in terms of which are most important to have fixed, and which are most prevalent in enterprises.”

It transpires that enterprise customers have cited SAP and Oracle as applications they are most concerned about – mainly because those systems are so large and so critical to the business. Compounding the issues, is the fact that in many cases, organisations have highly customised those applications in their deployment, so the type of error may vary from organisation to organisation.

Schnell believes this is why intelligent remediation is so important. He claims that App-DNA’s AppTitude solution identifies the issues with each application based on the DNA of that application; how it was created, or modified, for the enterprise specific configuration where it is running. So even if an organisation has modified its SAP or Oracle configuration – which is pretty much every major organisation - AppTitude can identify the issues with IE8/IE9 compatibility.

IE9 undoubtedly faces some challenges, due to it only being compatible with Windows Vista (SP2 or greater) and Windows 7 and through tough competition from the likes of Firefox and Chrome. In addition to this, enterprises need to be aware that they will have additional challenges ahead, as they work to overcome web application compatibility issues.