Currently, scheduling is being implemented on an as-needed basis. That is, the departments or groups that have an immediate need are maintaining their own calendar servers or contracting to have them maintained. There is no consensus within the institution on the need scheduling. Resources have not been allocated for the level of hardware and maintenance that would be required of an institutional calendar. Little experience with the software makes it difficult to predict what the true costs would be.
Conditions are likely to change as internet scheduling standards are established.
One of the features that makes the Netscape Calendar Server able to scale is its ability to connect separate sets of schedules, or nodes. Nodes are simply collections of scheduling information that may represent organizational structures like departments, or be set up to accomodate physical constraints like server capacity. All scheduling information is organized into a node. A node may refer only to the information it contains, or multiple nodes may be connected so that the information in one node is visible to the users of another node. It is likely, at some point in the future, that the stand-alone nodes being created today will be connected to other nodes as collaborative scheduling becomes desirable.