A handful of former Softies who worked to the Microsoft Internet Explorer crew have released a firm that is tackling the IE six migration issue faced by numerous businesses.
The new Redmond, Wash.-based provider, Browsium, released on March 15 its first product, known as UniBrows. UniBrows will enable “legacy IE 6-based Internet applications to run on
Windows 7 and IE 8 on Windows XP without modifying a single line of code,” according to the company’s Internet site.
One of the main reasons that lots of companies (in the U.S.,
Office 2010 Product Key, at least) are still running IE6 on XP is they’ve built internally-facing applications that are dependent on IE six. Microsoft has been encouraging customers, even those running on XP, to upgrade to IE 8 — but not IE 9,
Windows 7 Ultimate Key, since Microsoft doesn’t support IE 9 on XP. But the upgrade process is difficult and costly. In fact, Gartner analysts dinged Microsoft last year around the cost of its IE six migration tools.
Browsium is touting UniBrows as a way for organizations to free up their
Windows 7 upgrade path. The item makes use of an IE 8 add-on that enables IE 6 web applications to run in an IE 8 tab, enabling enterprises to upgrade PCs to
Windows 7 while keeping their legacy IE 6 applications running unmodified, according to the company.
“UniBrows delivers complete IE6 functionality and behaviors by using the original, native IE6 rendering, JavaScript, ActiveX and security design,” company officials said in today’s press release. Administrators can
create the rules and profiles for specifying which net applications should use the IE6 browser engine and legacy ActiveX components and which can use the IE 8 ones.
Browsium has been testing UniBrows with customers for the past six months,
Office 2010 Professional, the release added.
UniBrows is licensed to organizations with 5,000 to 50,000 PCs with a $5,000 base license fee plus $5 per seat. Licenses,
Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007, renewable yearly, include all updates and upgrades at no additional cost. Volume discounts are available. There’s a 60-day free evaluation kit available at www.browsium.com.
Browsium’s management team includes three previous Microsoft IE execs: Matthew Heller,
Office 2010 Professional Plus, Browsium’s Founder and CEO; Gary Schare, its President and Chief Operating Officer; and Matthew David Crowley, its Chief Technology Officer.