One of my previous employers understood this well (too well perhaps.) A customer needed automatic over-the-network synchronization of directories. It was implem

One of my previous employers understood this well (too well perhaps.) A customer needed automatic over-the-network synchronization of directories. It was implemented as a behemoth Windows application with a complicated GUI. Nowadays I would implement it as a behemoth Linux application with an AJAX-abusing complicated web GUI :)