The next killer application is waiting just around the corner for them to develop and for us to support. This ongoing cycle is what makes our jobs simultaneously challenging, fun, and frustrating. Every campus must develop a method for matching its information resources to its financial resources. It is another of our important responsibilities to lead in developing scalable and affordable funding models to sustain the technology infrastructure we develop. The difference is that I am referring here to applications, not hardware.
Many faculty members lose interest in developing an application after it almost works.
Another responsibility we have is to support high quality, rock solid applications within an environment of constant innovation. We must maintain and enhance these core services within the same environment that encourages faculty members and their students to be successful in their next round of innovation. Organizational architecture is as important as technical architecture. Most technical people are suspicious of, if not outright hostile to, attempts to make the organization in which they work function better. They believe that technical problems are much more fun to work on than interpersonal issues.