[2056] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: NREN and the Economics of Mainframes Versus Workstations
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (matsb@sics.se)
Thu Jan 23 07:07:21 1992
To: cook@tmn.com (Gordon Cook)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 23 Jan 92 01:58:52 -0500.
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 92 12:56:50 +0100
From: matsb@sics.se
Gordon,
It is a common trend allover the world that university computer
centers is in trouble. Their services are normally based on central
mainframes. Management at the Universites noramlly has put the
Computer Center in a position to sell services for real money to the
users. This goes for CPU-time, and consultance services.
The cheap PC- and workstations equipment means that the departments
and end users buy a lot of equipment themselves. This creates a big
service demand on local area networking and systems adminstration
people. A department will at best employ a student to do this. A large
department might afford real staff. Thoses universities and computer
centers that has found ways to ensure that the distributed computing
environment (nice words is it not:-) has the right support from people
who now the tasks is fortunate.
Those universitets where the gap between the computer center and users
is widening will have less possibilities to use the new technology. It
also is a waste of possibilities and money.
--mats
It would be interesting to know if any economist has looked at the co
st to
american education of keeping its mainframe infrastructure alive. Th
e
NREN legislation lets researchers use their grants for network expens
es
for the first time. has anyone ever tried to quantify how much of th
is
money will go in the form of surcharges to university mainframes rath
er
than to buyingnew networking services for university scientists. the
economics behind NREN on many levels appear to be murky. it would be
interesting to know how the economics of use of university computing
centers are changing and to what extent access to the net *IS* still
a
free good for university faculty.
I would appreciate hearing publicly or privately reactions to these
questions.
