Microsoft wants to show enterprises that Edge means business, rather than the thing you use to download Chrome

Roadmap, release schedule will tease fancy upcoming features in browser

In an effort to woo businesses to its latest take on the browser, Microsoft has unveiled an enterprise roadmap and release schedule for the Beta and Stable channels of Edge.

The former is intended to give administrators an idea of what the company is planning to do next with its Chromium-based browser for the purposes of the planning and deployment alongside the rest of the Microsoft 365 product line.

Filtering by "Microsoft Edge" in the roadmap at the moment shows the company has nothing in development (enterprise-wise), although biz-friendly features such as policy tweaks and a preview of the Enterprise Site List Manager for Internet Explorer Mode (all Edge 85) are rolling out in the beta channel in July.

As for that release schedule, Microsoft has published release dates for the Beta and Stable channels up to version 89, which it expects to hit the Stable channel in March 2021.

Edge has four channels: Stable, which is intended for broad deployment, Beta, which is for validation, Dev, which is updated weekly and for planning purposes, and the daily "bleeding edge" Canary builds.

However, as if to emphasise who is really in charge of the browser codebase, it acknowledged that "the trigger for Beta and Stable major releases is an equivalent Chromium release". Microsoft also noted: "Release dates are approximate and might vary based on build status."

Chromium is a little blunter. Its schedule is only provided for "rough planning purposes" and "subject to change without notice".

Microsoft is keen to get enterprise buy-in for its latest attempt to crack the browser market, which launched earlier this year after the company ditched its previous in-house rendering efforts.

It has seen some success as the combined market share of the two incarnations of Edge crept past that of Mozilla's Firefox in recent months. However, the sizeable lead of Google's Chrome browser means that, for many consumers at least, Edge remains that thing they have to open in order to download Chrome. Enterprises, eyeing their legacy intranet apps and Edge's Internet Explorer mode, may feel differently.

Chromium-based Edge will also be found in the next update of Windows 10, 20H2, which is due in the latter part of 2020. ®