We have a large code base in MFC and VB. A few applications are in .NET. All these applications interoperate with each other on the user's machine and also connect with Unix servers via sockets.

Recently we have started discussing a re-write of our applications and possibility of moving a lot of these desktop applications to web (they would run in intranet). A straight forward way is rewritting them in one of the .NET technologies. But a suggestion about using Google Web tookit has popped up and the argument is that it would help creating applications that would run in a browser on both desktop and mobile devices.

One of the key problem that I see is that GWT is a large abstraction over Javascript. This will require the team to learn GWT, Javascript, IDEs etc as their experience has been primarily Microsoft technologies and not Java. It would be easier for them to learn .NET technologies instead of GWT.

I do not have a depth of GWT and its drawback pittfalls and do not know about a parallel Microsoft Technology that I should investigate.

So I would appreciate if people here can share their views or experiences using GWT or equivalent Microsoft technology.