🚀 go-pugleaf

Greetings:

I would like to describe a situation, pose a few questions, and ask for your
comments to either those questions, or points you feel should have been
raised, should you have first-hand experience of the situation similar to
the one described.

Almost all of our in-house departmental data resides within the UNIX
environment.  The UNIX servers house the third-party application software.
The UNIX workstations run as a complete, self-contained OS distribution.  As
the recent years have progressed, data has steadily moved from the UNIX
workstations to the centralized UNIX servers.  The current UNIX environment
will stabilize within the next three months, and will stay that way for the
next three years.  At that time, provided it has not been decided to switch
to Windows NT, I foresee that all remaining local data will be moved to
these UNIX servers, and that the UNIX workstations will be replaced with a
UNIX network computer.

In the PC environment, user accounts are on a centralized PC server, and
each desktop PC runs as a complete, self-contained OS distribution.  There
is almost no desktop PC data.  About 98-99% of all desktop PC's run the
usual desktop applications (word processor, spreadsheet, mail, etc.) and run
programs and access data residing on the UNIX servers.  The PC desktop
upgrade plan calls for the replacement of the present with newer, faster,
complete, and self-contained OS PC's.

My questions to you are:
1.      Have you been, or are you, in a similar situation, and what are your
plans?
2.      What is the viability of network computer technology currently and
in the foreseeable future?
3.      What benefits and pitfalls are there in implementing network
computers in both the UNIX and PC environments?
4.      If you were going to redirect a desktop PC replacement scheme, from
one of self-contained units to net PC's, how would you go about this?

I would appreciate your input.  Please respond to me personally and not to
the list.  Thank you.

Sincerely,
Gary L. Gill,  glgill@gov.nb.ca

Gary L. Gill, UNIX System Administrator
Province of NB, DNR&E, ISS
Flemming Forestry Centre, Room 200
1350 Regent St
Fredericton, NB  E3C 2G6, Canada
(bus): 506-453-6690; (fax): 506-453-6676; (email): glgill@gov.nb.ca