In a move that can be seen as a notable substantiation of the suitability of Mozilla's Firefox browser in large-scale enterprise environment, IBM has recently announced a change in its internal IT policy, whereby it has made Firefox its default browser.

Noting that Firefox is "stunningly standards compliant" and not "beholden to one commercial entity," IBM disclosed its plans of encouraging its nearly 400,000 employees to use Firefox on their existing systems, as well as rolling out Firefox browser employees on new computers.

The move will largely result in a substantial increase in Mozilla's browser market share in the coming months, with IBM employees not only using the browser at work, but also likely to use it back home as well.

Discussing the reason behind IBM's adoption of Firefox, Bob Sutor, VP of Linux and open source software at IBM, said in a blog post that the browser's transparent development model, strong security, and robust support for Web standards, along with its extensibility, have made it the "gold standard" for open source Web browsers.

Sutor added: "The longstanding commitment of Mozilla to open standards and the quality of the implementation of them in Firefox gives us confidence that this is a solid, modern platform that should be part of IBM's own internal transformation to significantly greater use of Cloud Computing."