I'm not Laurence, but I've been here 18 years and
the reason I was brought in was because the "Centralized Model" wasn't able to
keep up with the innovations and the pace of change as they related to computing
that were happening in those days (late 80's, early 90's). They couldn't
or wouldn't support us, so we went out on our own, for applications development,
office productivity, and networking. I remember transitioning people from
the IBM 5520 word processing system (and what a beast that thing
was!) to WordPerfect DOS, and how amazed they were at what they could do
with WordPerfect. But the 5520 was the "Central" word processing option,
or you could buy a fancy IBM Selectric typewriter with a correction
ribbon. And they were installing PS/2 Model 30's with 4Mb Token Ring as
their preferred PC networking system. At least they recommended Netware as
their LAN server software back then!
Many of the problems we had then are still going to
be issues now, specifically (as Tony Cooke mentioned) man-hours. I don't
see AIS or ACNS hiring gobs of new techies, nor do I see many of us "independent
minded" folk from the hinterlands of campus wanting to go work for AIS or ACNS.
(There would be no place to park!)
Frankly (and I'm afraid this will offend some of
the "Central" people) the level of support we see now from the Central folks
indicates that if they got *more* responsibilities and *more* people to support,
they would be crushed under the weight of it all. The wait for support
would look like the wait for health care in Canada or England.
"Herniated disk? We can get you in for an MRI in six months. If you
need surgery, you'll have that four months after we get the MRI results
back". "You have 100 users that can't log in? Well, there are 73
service requests in line ahead of you"...you get the picture.
-Scott
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 2:57
PM
Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] University-wide
messaging and calendar system
Laurence,
Not to make anyone feel "more mature" then
they already are, but I wasn't around then. What was the reason for the
break from that type of management (not to say it was or is
right)?
--
Troy Murray
Informatics Specialist
Michigan State
University
Biomedical Research & Informatics Center (BRIC)
100
Conrad Hall
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: 517-432-4248
Fax:
517-353-9420
E-mail:
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