Hello, I'm going to vote yes and no. :-)
I've recently looked at HP Service Manager and the UI approach is very different. Whilst I'm no expert on building HP SM workflow (and indeed, I'm no expert on AR System workflow either), the UI appears to be built on something like Google Web Toolkit and delivered through Eclipse (exactly as BMC have done with the new admin tool) as well as a smarter web front end. Both are fairly agile and whilst I prefer to do everything through a browser, complex UIs seem to 'feel' better through a thick client. And if a system can provide the same UI/workflow to both without much fuss, there should be little pain. HP appear to have gone through a lot of pain to eject a legacy framework and 'start again'. I've taken a screenshot so you can take a look: http://www.javasystemsolutions.com/img/others/hpsm-uis.png It's not a perfect representation of both UIs, and one is clearly more attractive, but they are both functional. The challenge for BMC is they haven't written the UI in GWT so the pain of two UIs is going to be much greater. Hence, it does make sense to pick the web, but other posters (Claire, Michael) have made the point very well that in order to ditch a thick client, the web application must be a true lightweight component. John _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org attend wwrug12 www.wwrug12.com ARSList: "Where the Answers Are"
