What excuses are IT managers/directors using to defer upgrading from Internet Explorer 6?

Why are so many medium to large enterprises still using Internet Explorer 6? Is there some secret ultra valuable feature or cost reason that has extended its life? What are the most common excuses you have been given?

Solution 1:

The biggest one I hear is testing legacy code against a new version. With so many companies having internal web applications which they haven't touched for a while, they often site system instability and the high cost with testing all the production systems against a new version.

It's also difficult to get any large organization to do anything faster than a snails pace. Upgrading in these places often takes years.

Solution 2:

Many organizations are looking at this from the other direction. Absent at least one compelling reason to upgrade, they see no reason to do so. And this logic is hard to argue with. An upgrade will cost money, will trigger problems, will break things, and will be a distraction.

Why fix what isn't broken? Particularly when there is a whole bunch of stuff that is broken, a smaller budget than last year, and a number of empty tech staff positions because of a layoff or hiring freeze.

I don't necessarily agree with this posture, but I understand it.

Solution 3:

Cost. Always cost.

Never had to endure it on my own machine, but certainly I've encountered this at a number of clients (typically government and large financials) where IE6 is actually just a side effect of having hardware rolled out in 5 year+ batches. Monolithics like this create massive management problems for themselves by buying and rolling out their upgrades in chunks, never at the top of the curve anyway (too expensive).