Webapps vs. desktop apps

Over the last 6 months I've been asking IT managers whether they prefer webapps or classic desktop apps for deployment to their employees. Most have said they prefer webapps but they use whatever does the job best. I like this pragmatic answer. It tells me these IT folks are sensitive to the requirements of the business (and hopefully of the users).

Ryan Stewart at ZDNet has a good list of reasons for when to use each platform. I think he glosses over the need for offline access in his comments at the end, but the list seemed otherwise solid. 

Comments

[Bruce McCarthy]

Barry Coleman replies:

"Why not have the best of both worlds? Adobe's Apollo project (http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo) aims to allow you to create web applications in HTML/JavaScript or Flex/Flash and deploy them as desktop apps with full local access. It's in alpha now and it works pretty well for an alpha, I've deployed an existing Flex app to it without any real issues."

I agree completely. I posted on the potential for Apollo a while back:

http://www.userdriven.org/blog/2007/2/14/apollo-shoots-for-the-moon.html