Web-Clients vs. Desktop Clients?

lundmatt asks: "My company is a software development institution that has been around for awhile. We are in the process of designing a large in-house tool to merge our current bug tracking, version control, design and implementation processes, and a few other stand-alone systems. A large debate we're having is whether to implement a Web-based client or a desktop application client. Most people fit neatly in a pro-Web camp and others in a pro-desktop application camp, unfortunately we are in a position where we can't develop both." There really is no right answer to this question, as many applications can adopt themselves into either environment. Sure, there are several applications that can benefit from one or the other, but the concepts of Web and desktop are dovetailing, and have been for years.

"The argument of the desktop proponents is that Web interfaces are not productive for a tool which would benefit from a lot of rich GUI controls such as trees, etc. The Web-proponents argue that Web clients are no less productive. The Web-proponents argue that deployment effort is zero though the desktop proponents feel this is a negligible issue for us. Surely we are not the first company to debate this though I've had a difficult time finding 'unbiased' studies that compare and contrast the two options. I hoped that some of your readers would have some opinions about this and since we're all SlashDot fans, we thought we'd drop you a line."