Gartner are not helping people move away from IE6

Okay, so I’m not being completely fair here.  Analysts Gartner Inc. have published some research for their clients who are still stuck using Internet Explorer 6, as reported by IT Expert Voice.
Gartner say that organisations are still standardising on IE6 because “they’ve built up sizable installed bases of line-of-business applications that are IE 6-dependent” among other reasons.

IE6, which is notoriously buggy and insecure will only be supported by Microsoft until April 8th 2014, though a great many commentators argue this is still far too long and some websites such as Facebook have dropped support for it already.
Gartner have said that up to 40% of the applications business are running on IE6 fail under IE8.  Does this mean that Microsoft need to offer some type of “compatibility mode” or that businesses need to recode their software?  It’s probably the latter but with the sheer volume of work and coding involved it will be difficult to convince businesses to take the plunge when they’re used to already overstretched IT departments keeping the lights on with the current infrastructure.
Blogger Mary-Jo Foley reported “Furthermore, many ISV applications, including complex ERP and CRM applications, with lengthy and expensive migration requirements, must be remediated before IE8 can be used,” Gartner officials said in the research note. “Through 2014, IE8 compatibility problems will cause at least 20% of organizations to run overtime or overbudget on their Windows 7 migration projects,” Gartner estimated.
The answer, surely, lies in virtialisation but even there Microsoft would need to find a way to completely lock down the code and security in IE6 or an IE6 clone as they would need a product with a shelf-life much longer than the 2014 deadline.
“A set of (IE 6 migration) tools from Microsoft would be nice,” said Gartner analyst Michael Silver, “But Microsoft seems to have decided not to help extend the life of IE 6 apps.” reported Mary-Jo Foley.
I’m of the opinion that it’s not Microsoft’s job to help people to continue to use software that’s as terrible and insecure as IE6 and they should stand their ground.  As the world moves towards new privacy laws for online and computer services, IE6 is the primary reason such new legislation has become necessary.