Micros through mainframes: A successful implementation
Authors: Leslie Maltz
Venue: Proceedings of the 11th annual ACM SIGUCCS conference on User services (1983)

Historically universities took their early steps in computing through the acquisition of mainframe computer systems. These early machines were used primarily for academic and research purposes. During the last decade we saw an increased demand for computing services for student applications, research, and administrative purposes. To meet this demand and to bring the systems closer to the users, many of us expanded capacities through the introduction of decentralized facilities. These took the form of mini and supermini computers to be used as dedicated systems, located in academic and administrative departments. While these decentralized systems were most effective, we found that we still could not keep up with the demand for computing facilities. The next natural step was to further decentralize through the introduction of microcomputer systems. While our growth has been predominately in a decentralized manner, the need for a strong mainframe has been ever present. This has been mainly to support large applications and to be a host on a computing network. Specialized hardware and software need only be supported on a single host system that can be accessed by users via a campus-wide network. This has proven to be cost effective as it has resulted in less duplication of specialized equipment, packages, and support services for decentralized system while still meeting the needs of the users. Our experiences at Stevens Institute of Technology have followed this pattern of expansion from mainframe to micro with the concept of a campus-wide network as an integral factor. Our recent experiences with the requirement of the acquisition of a specified microcomputer system by our incoming students has been widely publicized. Through this paper I hope to share our experiences including the formulation and evolution of the planning process, its implementation, and some of our future plans based on the success of the project. Specifically, we now have an Ethernet implementation to support networking of our users with various decentralized systems and mainframes. Also, we have implemented elementary networking functions between various kinds of microcomputers and our DECsystem-10 and VAX-11/780. We are into the next phase of the plan which will allow a massive number of microcomputers onto the Ethernet. The results of our plan have been most favorable. They include a familiarization of freshman students with computing tools and techniques on a professional basis, the facilitation of computer access for research, an updating of administrative processing, and the communication of the parts in an economical manner. This paper will present a description of our experiences with the intent that they may be used as a model for other institutions looking in the same direction. We believe that Stevens has been the vanguard of colleges that have been successful in arranging a &ldquo;marriage of convenience&rdquo; between our micros and mainframes while welcoming our new offspring through the delivery of an Ethernet.