Opinion: Microsoft has never said that they would drop support for Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) after the release of Windows XP Service Pack 3. However, I've often wondered if it would be to Microsoft's advantage, as well as beneficial to their customers, if they did drop the IE6 support. With Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) now the status quo for most non-Enterprise users of Windows and IE8 development underway, what better opportunity is there to end support for IE6 than now?

There is no question that Microsoft is supporting IE6 in the next service pack. Jane Maliouta, Microsoft's Deployment Project Manager for IE8, addressed IE6 support with XP SP3 in an IEBlog post on IE and Windows XP SP3.

XPSP3 will continue to ship with IE6 and contains a roll-up of the latest security updates for IE6. If you are still running Internet Explorer 6, then XPSP3 will be offered to you via Windows Update as a high priority update. You can safely install XPSP3 and will have an updated version of IE6 with all your personal preferences, such as home pages and favorites, still intact.

So the question remains, just how long does Microsoft plan to support this 7 year old browser? From as near as I can tell, support for Internet Explorer 6 is tied to the life cycle of the Windows XP operating system. Mainstream support for Windows XP is currently dated to end in April 14, 2009. So that means Internet Explorer 6 will have been on the desktop for more than eight years! While enterprises may take comfort that product support for Windows XP and IE6 has lasted so long, consumers and the rest of the world have since moved on with the changing world.

"Business leaders need to incorporate innovation, efficiency and abandonment as a means for reaching greater success.

Jeff Bezos is not one to let dust settle on his shelves. The founder and CEO of Amazon, the world’s largest online reseller, routinely abandons operations and ideas that aren’t yielding their intended results. He calls these “defects,” or inefficiencies in operations. When these defects are eliminated, costs fall and result in Amazon being able to offer customers lower prices and new frills."

Complete Story

"Web 2.0 is at the center of a wave of excitement concerning how
enterprises—commercial or public organisations—are trying to exploit
the current generation of Internet technologies. This four-part article
series
examines aspects of Web 2.0 relevant to the enterprise. In this first installment,
take a look at the business and technical drivers behind Web 2.0, the challenges and
opportunities Web 2.0 presents to enterprises, and the relationship between Web 2.0
and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)."

Complete Story

"We’re now at the point where the most innovative technology for users really is being created in the nonbusiness space. Corporate IT has become the prisoner of legacy technology, and the result isn’t just stodginess — we’re missing out on innovation that could make our users more productive, more effective and more successful."

--Frank Hayes, "Prisoners of Legacy", ComputerWorld, January 7, 2008

"Web 2.0 Summit attendees see opportunities in the adaptation of online services to mobile devices as well as new business models for the online video space."

Complete Story

"Under CEO Jerry Yang's direction, the Web portal is trying to return to its tech roots and shift away from being a media catch-all"

Complete Story

"Over at Micropersuasion, Steve Rubel is making a bold prediction: The portals will be big winners in the social-networking wars."

Complete Story

The biggest reward I get from working on IT projects is the opportunity to take new ideas and new strategies and piece them together into something that has never been done before.  Even when I'm not the one originating the new idea, I like helping other innovative people bring their ideas to the table.  I have ideas, dreams, and aspirations to help take my workplace to the next level of where it should be via innovative use of what I know best, information technology.  How could innovation and all these wonderful ideas I have in my head not be anything but a good thing for my organization?  A recent article in the Wall Street Journal answers just that question by saying that there are negatives for an organization that innovates too much.

In "How Innovation Can Be Too Much of a Good Thing", George Anders writes about how companies and business consultants are rediscovering that less innovation can produce better business results.  Companies that used to push the limit in efficiency are finding that they're "jamming too many new ideas into a product pipeline, without enough slack time to ensure that critical tasks stayed on schedule".

Similar insights have been standard wisdom on the manufacturing floor for decades. Factory managers learn about bottlenecks through the formal discipline of queuing theory. That teaches them to keep a little slack in the system to handle the unpredictable -- but inevitable -- crunch times.