Architecture: WPF vs Web for the LOB financial application portfolio

Question

I am creating a roadmap for creating a portfolio of systems / tools that will be used by financial services customers as their final solution. I want to decide whether to write code in WPF or create a web application using a framework like Angular. I have a lot of experience in WPF, but I have 0 experience developing web applications. In case I chose a web route, I will have a learning curve. There will be 3 other developers and a user interface developer who will work with me. I don’t care about the time spent on developing a product to enter the market. I take care to use the correct structure for the problem.

The following are the criteria for making this decision:

• In the midst of my business, I will have almost 60 clients and each client will have about 10 users.
• The application must be very responsive.
• In the worst case scenario, the entire application will consume about 300 MB of memory.
• Customers do not want the product to significantly increase equipment / service costs.
• They want to be able to work from home.
• Users will not use the application through a tablet / smartphone.

My first thought was to create a web platform for this, because everything I read / listen to tells me that the Internet is the place where the world moves. However, I have the following problems.

• This is not like web frameworks that are on par with WPF. (If you haven’t read it yet, Microsoft recently came out with a WPF roadmap to show that it’s not dead).
• None of the competitors' products are network-based. Most of the products on the market are 4-5 years old, and then the web framework was much worse.
• Some competitors are distributing their WPF / Java-based product through Citrix. This gives customers the choice between downloading the application on the desktop or using it through Citrix, in which case the application is not installed locally, and also gives them the opportunity to work from home.

With my non-existent experience in web development architecture, it seems that the main reason for developing a web product is “because all the cool kids do it” and because “this is where the world moves.”

I would like to hear your thoughts and recommendations on how to make this decision.

Answer 1

I also struggled with a similar problem. I will consider two factors that use the full power of the computer and UX (User Experience). WPF is the best for very complex financial applications that simultaneously process multiple documents. In a web application, to simplify UX, you are dealing with one document at a time.