

Examples of successful migrations of desktop apps to the Web? - reuven

Hi, everyone.  A company I know has been selling a desktop application for a while, successfully and profitably.  They're now considering moving it to the Web.  From what I've seen, this makes a heckuva lot of sense, from both the technical and business perspectives.<p>However, I'm a bit stuck for examples of applications that have successfully made such a transition, and was hoping to get some insights from others here.  FedEx moved from PC-based tracking software to the Web, and seems to have done well as a result.  Banks have also abandoned PC-based software in favor of the Web.  Adobe has ported Photoshop to the Web, but I'm not sure if it's really comparable, or if they're making real money from it.  I'm also unsure of how many people use Intuit's Web-based software, rather than their desktop apps.<p>So, can you think of any good examples of companies that successfully made this transition?  Any and all insights are welcome.
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fedecarg
Yes, Google's proprietary Web applications are a great example of desktop
applications that where ported to the Web:

Gmail (proprietary) = Thunderbird (open-source) Google Docs (proprietary) =
OpenOffice (open-source) Google Reader (proprietary) = RSSOwl (open-source)

They forgot to add the "download source" link at the bottom of the page.

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nostrademons
A lot of enterprise software fits in this category. My last employer was one
of them, but its name or product wouldn't mean anything to the average reader
of this site, since it's a niche financial product.

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ickmonst
TurboTax

