[5] in winnt
Followup to NT Deployment and Support Issues Meeting 2/18/97
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rob Smyser)
Mon Mar 17 18:06:21 1997
To: winnt@MIT.EDU, awillis@MIT.EDU, pbh@MIT.EDU, goguen@MIT.EDU, seant@MIT.EDU
To: sampson@MIT.EDU, sharari@MIT.EDU, tregan@MIT.EDU, azary@MIT.EDU
Cc: sbjones@MIT.EDU, cavan@MIT.EDU, hogue@MIT.EDU.janat, ljr@MIT.EDU,
dbaron@MIT.EDU, nschmidt@MIT.EDU, rar@MIT.EDU, smyser@MIT.EDU,
kelley@MIT.EDU, mbarker@MIT.EDU, rferrara@MIT.EDU, tytso@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 18:04:43 EST
From: Rob Smyser <smyser@MIT.EDU>
Folks,
You are getting this message because you were one of:
- at the WinNT meeting on 2/18 after ocmg that day
- recommended to be on the winnt list by someone else
I'd like to see if we can organize a virtual task force to tackle the WinNT
problem over the next few months. It's clear from the meeting notes and from
discussions with a diverse group of folks that NT needs to be addressed
and that there are many, many pieces of the puzzle spread thinly across many
people.
Some Objectives of this group I would list include these:
- collect opinions on what the list of support and deployment issues
really are. The many points of view revealed in the 2/18 meeting
can come together to make a list of, what, ten biggies?
- debate and define our current answers to each of the issues above.
No answer is set in stone, in this fast moving product-driven world,
but we need to have _an_ answer, the latest best answer, available at all
times.
- portray our recommendations or current best practices in some form, so that
members of the mit community can relate their own efforts to those going on
here.
- develop timelines for specific processes or projects that help get
the above to happen and stay on track.
Some Products of the working group would include:
- web pages depicting the issues and answers about NT at MIT. There's
a corollary in the win95 support pages, but I imagine the WinNT would
be much more fully fleshed since WinNT is more officially part of MIT
than '95 ever was.
- short papers about emerging technical issues and how NT relates
to them -- DHCP, NDS, Kerberos and NT 5, etc. Customers could read these
when they have bright ideas about implementing new technologies
in their labs or offices.
To help facilitate this effort, I've assembled some Resources:
- the "winnt" mailing list - as the working list of people who want
to be part of the project
- the "winnt" discuss meeting on menelaus - to record the discussion
- the "winnt" access control list and athena locker - to hold
web pages, etc., that act as tools for thinking, and as a presentation
interface to ourselves and to the public about the current thinking
in I/S about the problem.
I think we all agree that something needs to be done about all this, but we need
some help getting started with thinking about what "all this" is and what it
would mean to "do something about it". I'm happy to commit what resources I
have available to help coordinate things and keep the work moving forward.
I'm happy to have company in that too.
Do we need to meet to discuss setting some expectations on Scope and Goals,
perhaps set a broad Schedule, identify some Products and the Resources it would
take to do them?
How does everyone think about trying to do this without adding much to the
meeting burden?
If you want to be added to or removed from the winnt list, any member of
the list can add or remove users including themselves. Or send me mail and I'll
take care of it.
I'm looking forward to what others think about what we should be doing next.
Thanks!
Rob
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Rob Smyser Computing Help Desk, MIT Information Systems, 11-226
smyser@mit.edu (617) 253 1358
