Despite the pain we've felt--and will no doubt continue to feel for at least the next couple of years--I think few people would challenge the wisdom of our strategic migration plans. From the highest to the lowest levels of the university, there is respect for our vision and a recognition that it is better to invest in new systems than to perform a year 2000 conversion on old host-based systems.

At the same time, many people along the way have questioned our tactical decisions. Fair enough. I've done a little Monday-morning quarterbacking myself over the years. In the end, you make decisions--good and bad--and try to make the best of it. Hopefully, you walk away at the end of the day feeling like you've accomplished something of value.

Setting the Stage While most of you may have no experience working in a large university environment, many of you were surely "customers" at what I sometimes refer to as Higher-Education Inc., a.k.a. the modern research university. From a technology perspective, it's a unique blend of leading-edge technology on the research and instruction side, and ho-hum production computing systems that support personal productivity and business operations.

Yes, this is a real business. We process a large payroll, procure substantial services and equipment, and balance our payables and receivables--at least in our good years. In this sense, we're pretty much like any other large business that stares down a bottom line at the start and end of every fiscal year. Of course, we have some unique systems--vertical applications, if you wish. Like many not-for-profits, we spend a lot of time and energy raising money from our "friends," an exercise that involves lots of flesh-pressing and an equal amount of computerized prospecting and record-keeping. Then there is our student-records system, the massive database application that handles everything from admissions processing to registration to transcripts. With 4,000 or so new "customers" climbing the hill past the Carrier Dome to get to class each year, it's fairly dynamic as well.

In addition to the major central information systems, we have lots of smaller departmental applications ranging from a physical-plant work-order system to a health-center patient management application to a parking permit and ticketing system. Many departments manage their own LAN environments with various homegrown applications.

The research and instruction side is even more eclectic. Some academic units push the envelope with IT-oriented research into exotic technologies or bleeding-edge experimental systems. Others look for stable, high-performance platforms for lots of number-crunching.

And then, of course, everyone needs lots of word processing, e-mail and Internet access.