There are really two problems here * enterprise app development that assumes that there will be no need to maintain an application once developed * corporate

There are really two problems here * enterprise app development that assumes that there will be no need to maintain an application once developed * corporate IT people needing to justify their existence. Web applications benefit from being easier to install and can be run from a central location; but, as a result of that you can't just toss the running of an app over to IT. You need a small core to maintain it. For most applications this makes the most business sense as the trade off of having one or two people still on the project is less expensive than having IT manage the installs of native applications. The result of moving the enterprise to web apps should have been a massive shrinking of corporate IT head counts and a small increase in dev head counts. Instead we see them defending their budgets by inserting themselves between the user and the browser and performing these massive test cycles. It's simply an inefficient use of resources cause by enterprise empire builders don't want to see a shrinking of their power.