The Dude Windows client is great. The Dude Web access is also great. But how many applications and web sites do you want to have to go to? I don't know about you, but I've got plenty.
If we can publish network information via RSS, then there is no limit to where we can have network status information show up. You can give executive summaries on network performance to various members of your support team or integrate network data into your CRM, etc, etc.
If you read up on RSS and look at how it is being used today, you'll quickly realize the power of this format.
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29