This whole Internet thing, it's bound to take off one of these days I tell you ...

One of the challenges biggest software vendors face is the move toward producing thin client versions of their solutions. As web-based technologies become more and more standard, and with the (re-) emergence of SAS (Software as a Service) as an important business model, offering web-based solutions has never been as important.

As we know, there some limitations inherent in Browser-based technologies that can make it very difficult if not impossible to achieve 100% feature parity between Windows-based applications and their thin-client equivalents. However, browser-based solutions bring significant benefits outside of their core functionality. For example, Web-based solutions do not require installation, configuration and maintenance of a client application on each and every desktop in the enterprise.

Several questions arise here. For example, should a software vendor spend development resources trying to achieve 100% feature parity between their Windows-based solutions and their thin-client equivalents? Or rather is it the case that Windows users and Web users of a given application have sufficiently different use cases to justify two different client offerings - one Windows and one Web - which may never have the same feature set? If not and having a thin client solution is most important, how much functionality would a user base be willing to sacrifice in order to gain web connectivity?

Enough questions. Time for some answers. I'm hoping to stir up some debate here, people. Please fire back with your thoughts, experiences, feelings, war stories, amusing anecdotes etc. As always I eagerly await your feedback ...