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HTML 5. This week at VMworld in Las Vegas and Dreamforce in San Francisco, both companies pushed HTML 5 as a
“
write once, deliver everywhere
”
mechanism. IT managers who are hearing about the
“
consumerization of IT
”
might use this time to ask,
“
how much longer can IE 6 be the corporate standard web browser?
”
The answer might be influenced by the platform. On a traditional desktop, used by one person, processing routine work using Microsoft desktop installed tools, the answer might just be,
“
IE 6 will be around until the building is torn down.
”
For mobile workers and workers for whom social collaboration is the norm, the answer is
“
IE 6 isn
’
t supported today.
”
It
’
s not insignificant that 20,000 attendees at VMworld and that many or more at Dreamforce embraced the message of HTML 5.
If I may characterize in very broad strokes, the VMworld audience was composed of
“
the face of IT
”
as we like to say at eWEEK. In the trenches, operations people and their managers. The Dreamforce audience is much more of a sales and marketing crowd, but still heavily tilted towards
“
the face of IT
”
that is prone to be a tablet-toting, cloud-sourcing, service customizing kind of person. That so many people from these two important areas of IT professionals nodded
“
yes
”
when the keynotes sounded the call for HTML 5 adoption, signals to me that the keynote is worth paying attention to.