There are major differences involved in developing Web-based applications versus an application which will just run on a PC or server — in a nutshell, Web-based applications are a lot harder!  And this means time and money for you!

Technical Difficulty

It's not easy to develop an application to be delivered through a Web browser.  A totally new set of techniques (JavaScript, style sheets, AJAX, ...) must be mastered in order to provide the technology base for the new application.  Browsers were originally developed simply to view static pages of information, not to interact with the user, and most of the new techniques have been patched onto this framework after the fact.

The developers have to split the entire application into a front end which will run within the browser (using one set of technical tools), and a back end which will run on the server (usually using an entirely different set of tools and technologies).  Then a complete set of messages must be designed to handle the interaction between these pieces.

Some tools, such as Microsoft's .NET technology, have striven mightily to hide this fact, and to some degree have succeeded.  But nothing comes for free — the average .NET application usually winds up transmitting (behind the scenes) an enormous amount of data back and forth between the client (Web browser) and the server in order to maintain a compatible state between them.  For an application being deployed internally, with a 1Gig backbone Ethernet to handle the traffic, this usually isn't a problem.  But if the application is deployed externally over the Internet this invisible data load usually shows up as poor performance for the users.

On Nimbus, you just develop a standard application to run on a "virtual PC" which is your cloud computer.  The application doesn't know that Nimbus is displaying the screen remotely, and doesn't have to take this into account at all.  All of the standard libraries and techniques are available which have been in use for decades.  There is no front-end/back-end split.

Compatability

A Web application has to handle the major and minor differences in the existing Web browsers.  Designing any Web application to function correctly on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, Chrome, and a few others, can be a nightmare.  It can be done, but requires a great deal of expense and effort, not to mention a huge ongoing maintenance effort as any one of these pieces can change at any time and outside of your control.  And all of this is just the expense required to keep things running — no user value is added to your product!

On a Nimbus cloud computer this problem does not exist.  The application just runs on the cloud computer, and Nimbus handles all of the screen, keyboard, and mouse operations.  If there are any upgrades required at all, they occur within the datacenter so you have control over the timing.

User Interaction

This is the best kept secret of Web applications — most of them have lousy user interfaces.

The problem comes back to the front-end/back-end split again.  The front end knows where the user has positioned the cursor, or where they have clicked, or what special key sequence was just entered.  But the front end has little or no idea of what this means, since it does not handle the semantics of the operation.  So the best it can do is package everything up, send a message to the back end, and then wait for a response (which usually then repaints the whole screen unless very advanced techniques are used).

Since a Nimbus application does not have this whole front-end/back-end split, the whole user interface appears to be more responsive (and intelligent) to the user.

Deployment and Upgrades

Deploying the original application and then issuing upgrades in the future is close to a draw.

Aside from some perverse problems with caches (Your Care staff probably mumbles "Let me tell you how to clear the cache." in their sleep.) deploying a Web application is straightforward.  The user just visits your home page, and the new pages/logic are automatically used.

A Nimbus application is even easier — just put the new release on your cloud computer, and that's what everyone will see.