Firefox in the Enterprise: Where are we and where are we going?

Today I was kindly informed of an upcoming event being hosted by the Mozilla for the Enterprise Work Group.

The call is at 15:00 Eastern / 17:00 UTC on July 25th. Details are as follow :
* 650-903-0800 or 650-215-1282 x91 Conf# 280 (US/INTL)
* 1-800-707-2533 (pin 369) Conf# 280 (US)
Website : http://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise

So what is this all about? Simply put a group of dedicated programmers and system engineers from various disclosed and non-disclosed companies are getting together to discuss challenges and plans for developing Mozilla Firefox for the Enterprise. Currently, Firefox enjoys a high degree of use among consumers, and various trade shows have even convinced small and medium sized businesses of the benefits of Firefox. Unfortunately, as with many things, sometimes a single solution does not fit all cases.

The Enterprise Work Group will be focusing on what these challenges are and how to meet them. One of the ultimate goals is centralized security and management objectives. Unlike in small business, enterprise engineers can't easily go to every pc to manage security and ensure that configurations are standardized. Both the enterprise suffers in lost man hours, and end users who aren't able to guarantee their productivity won't differ from computer to computer.

By combining into an anonymity protected, but authoritative group, companies can hope to reduce risk and cost while developing an enterprise grade platform. A single set of requirements and standards can be formed that will allow comprehensive understanding of the goals of the community. Through case studies and examples, one can hope that a framework will be developed for successful deployments of Firefox as the enterprise grade browser platform is promises to be.

Links :
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise
http://www.getfirefox.com
http://www.kaply.com/weblog
http://e2pt0.blogspot.com/