Rich desktop applications are a new breed of Microsoft Windows™ based applications that deliver the best of the desktop with the best of the web.  These applications provide stunning, unrestricted user experiences while communicating with their underlying databases using the latest web services technology.  This gives us applications that can be installed from a single click, that update themselves whenever new versions are available.  They also perform extremely well over low speed and high latency communications infrastructures.

These benefits make this new breed of desktop application extremely well suited to today's business environment where users may be in different sites or working from home. Not all applications need to be delivered via a web browser and some would argue that the restrictions that this way of working can introduce outweigh the process improvements that come from working in the more conventional Windows style applications. 

You would probably not want to write a sixty page, complex proposal document full of charts, images and tables of contents using a web based word processor.  Similarly some business applications require more complex interaction with the Windows operating system, Microsoft Exchange™ or local hardware, they must provide efficient multi-tasking, always be available even if offline and sometimes be  highly secure. 

Take our GelTraining product for example.  This is aimed at providing small training administration teams with a tool that allows them to manage thousands of courses, roles, processes, events and delegates quickly and efficiently.  At times, the administration team will be extremely busy.  For example, an administrator might be in the middle of scheduling future course events that have complex pre-requisite relationships when the phone rings with a call from a senior delegate who wishes to register their requirements for a training event scheduled for tomorrow.  

Using a web application the administrator might have to throw away the scheduling work she had been working on to respond to the immediate need of the delegate on the phone.  Using our rich desktop application the administrator can simply jump straight to the delegates' record while leaving the scheduling screen open in another tab.  When she finishes recording the information from the delegate she can simply close the new tab and carry on working where she left off, a far more efficient way of working.