🚀 go-pugleaf

Brian,

>
> Hi Sam,
> now you have ME thinking ! <grin>
> We have been a mainframe shop for a long time, but like others are
> moving towards client-server slowly but surely.
> Accordingly, given your client-server view, could you expand further
> on how you do your computer billing and charging philosophy ?
> This is new territory for me !
> Thanks,
> Brian Risman
> brisman@io.org
> Bank of Montreal
> Toronto Ontario CANADA

In short, we don't charge anymore.
Our *large* Univeristy has multiple computer departments.
My department is funded centrally (i.e., we have a bydget and are an
expense line item).  All expansions of services/equipment is funded with
"one time" funds and staff are expected to contantly do more with less.

Other departments are charge-back funded, in that
they receive their "income" from charging for usage of their equipment.
There are probably lots of agreements among administrators that keep
such funding happening (bureacracy, red tape, etc).
Those other departments: one is shrinking and one is growing.

As for our client-server philosophy, we have found we can stretch our
investment in mainframes/servers if we ask/require our customers to
maintain their own copies of client software on their PC/MAC/SUN
workstations.  We have a software distribution group that works *a*lot*
with diskettes and CD-roms (and some floppies).   Customers use mainly
public domain and site-licensed software.  They use Visual Basic
packages we call "HomeNet" and "OfficeNet" we developed inhouse to act
as a common desktop for PC and MAC.

So as you see, we don't *charge* anymore, but customers do have a
choice to purchase (~ $2000) a workstation/modem combo or to travel to
one of over thirty computer labs on campus and take turns in the chair.
Also they can "choose" to
maintain their own software at whatever functional level *they* desire.
We are soooo good  to our customer!  ;-)   wry smiley.
(speaking from a twenty year background of applications programming,
it feels good to see my customers committed to doing some of their
own maintenance!)

I guess the cost accountants out there could say we distributed some
expenses of a major data processing department to the users?

I think the recent studies in the trade press have shown that client-
server architecture is actually more expensive than centralized DP
operations, but the psychology of client-server allows greater freedom
and greater productivity of enough key persons to make it worthwhile.
(I don't think I can explain that last sentence in a short time...)
Hopefully this answers your questions enough for now.  Enjoy!
Sam Fairchild
=============