Island, which has been focused on building quality browsers, has been tabbed by IGEL as their 2025 IGEL Ready Application Excellence Partner of the Year. It significantly upgrades what IGEL has been doing around their enterprise browser technology.
“Island was founded about five years ago, by Mike Fey and Dan Amiga, with Amiga basically invented the remote browser space,” said Michael Leland, who is Field CTO at Island. Island raised $730M across 4-5 rounds, with the last round being $250M for a total $4.8B valuation.
“If you think about what we do, it’s about building browsers for Windows and Mac,” Leland said. “Customers asked us to reach out into the thin client place. Island envisioned a world where the majority of knowledge workers spent most of their time in a browser. So we would be delivering the entire workspace to front line workers. We added on things like improved identity and data protection. The award was for awareness of what their customers looked for. Now IGEL can be managed right alongside us. We truly consider them a design partner.”
The issue, however, is that while Island reimagines the workspace for knowledge workers, focusing on security, productivity, and user experience through its enterprise browser platform, they also saw problems with its use.
“We wanted to get away from the consumer browser and its limitations, and get away from the cost and complexity of zero trust agents and VPNs,” Leland stated. “Reducing VDI cost and complexity also made sense because we aren’t just a browser any more. It made sense to extend into the thin client world. We solved that problem of delivering to knowledge workers without these things, while providing a better user experience.”
The Island unified platform addresses cybersecurity, data protection, networking, IT experience, and user productivity, with strong use cases being rapid onboarding, BYOD enablement, safe AI adoption, VDI cost reduction, disaster recovery, and zero trust. DLP and zero trust connectivity extend outside the browser.
Leland noted that large clients were investing in them, including millions of users, hundreds of customers across major verticals, and eight of the world’s largest banks.
“We stayed in stealth mode for two years, with the development team primarily in Tel Aviv, and we had more enterprise engineers than Microsoft and Google had combined, working on their versions of Chrome and Edge,” Leland said.
He also stressed that these options made a great deal of sense.
“There were once two other flavours of browser,” he said. “One used to be Talon before they were acquired. Our positioning is that there is likely one right solution for any one customer, such as a full browser replacement or an extension installed into a consumer browser, or a managed computer browser. Our extension is about 90% but that’s just an extension, not a full browser replacement. For some, enterprise browsing is just RBI, which doesn’t give onscreen data redaction, which is one of the use cases.Chromium doesn’t expose APIs, and if you use it, you are stuck with the same attack surface a consumer browser has. That’s a basic limitation of a consumer browser and its consumer capabilities – extensions in an unmanaged world. There is no way to ensure extension-only will do what you want.”
The company emphasizes zero trust principles, identity-driven least privilege access, and micro-segmentation in its approach to security. Island’s Enterprise Browser, integrated with IGEL’s Immutable Endpoint OS, strengthens the IGEL Preventative Security Model by uniting application-level control with a stateless, trusted platform. This partnership redefines application delivery—simplifying infrastructure, cutting costs, elevating user experience, and reducing risk from phishing and ransomware. The IGEL Partnership also integrates Island’s capabilities into IGEL’s thin client environments.
“Earlier this year, we extended this outside the browser,” Leland said. “We can now steer traffic along the Island network, giving access to this port and inside out.” Gartner projects that while by 2025 a quarter will be thinking about it, by 2030, enterprise browsers are expected to be the core platform for workforce productivity and security, with the shift accelerating from consumer browsers to purpose-built enterprise solutions for compliance, governance, and data protection.
“If most knowledge worker activity today is in browsers built for consumers, it makes more sense they move to business, and turn it into an enterprise browser with an extension to Island,” he stated.
So how does IGEL benefit from what Island is doing?
“They want to deliver a secure computing environment, which they can offer as an extension – not just a thin client,” Leland stated. “This ensures they can benefit from security protections and a better experience.” This is also where the strategic partnership between IGEL and Island comes into play. The recognition, announced at IGEL Now & Next 2025 in Miami, highlights Island’s contributions to accelerating secure digital transformation for distributed and hybrid workforces.”
Leland said that to work, there has to be synchronization with the gold image and what it looks like to IGEL.
“When we need updating, they have to respin that image,” he said.
The browsers also have extensive internal use at Island.
“The Enterprise Browser isn’t just a product we sell,” Leland said. “It’s also a core tool we use internally to manage our security, enhance productivity, and simplify workflows across various departments,
“It is part of the streamlined onboarding process. Employees choose their device, and install the Island browser with a centralized workspace, intranet, and communication platform,” Leland indicated. “It is used for policy enforcement, application performance monitoring, and targeted messaging. I no longer have to manage anything about my workspace module. It lets the company deliver messaging to my home page and to communicate to my employees. We use it as an application service delivery program.”
There are also some integrations specific for them, such as call centres with hardware components.
The Preventative Security Model dramatically simplifies endpoint security by eliminating the need for complex security products including AV, EDR, DLP, backup and recovery. This partnership redefines application delivery – simplifying infrastructure, cutting costs, elevating user experience, and reducing risk from phishing and ransomware.
Using the Enterprise Browser’s built-in device posture assessments, Island also continuously monitors the integrity of devices accessing corporate systems. If a device lacks endpoint protection tools or is somehow compromised, the system triggers automatic security protocols – such as blocking access to sensitive applications or data – while notifying IT teams in real time.
Leland noted that one of their primary internal use cases for the Enterprise Browser is ensuring compliance with System and Organization Controls 2 (SOC 2), an internationally recognized standard that lays out best practices and controls for proper cybersecurity hygiene. Island, for example, helps meet SOC 2 requirements around protecting data and systems from unauthorized access with capabilities that allow limiting network access to authorized personnel, whether by department or individual designation.
Island has also customized browser policies by department with role-based access controls (RBAC). For example, the R&D and support teams have different extensions installed automatically, including tools like the customer relationship manager (CRM) and internal AI knowledge base extension, which enhances collaboration and productivity.