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TechTalks Event

Office XP: Strategic and Practical Considerations

with guest experts Greg Scott and Tony Saxman both from
the Oregon State University College of Business

May 17, 2001

Audio
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Transcript

Our experts are from a leading-edge business school that is planning to have Office XP deployed on hundreds of machines, just a couple of months from now. They've been using XP, they like XP, and now they're staking a lot on XP. What questions might you have had for them? Are Office 2000 and Office XP two completely different office suite products? If so, how and why are they different? What support problems might be generated by having many different versions of the office suite product? Who is knowledgeable on a higher education campus about the products? Are campuses thinking about upgrading their office suites this summer? What pricing structures is Microsoft offering to Higher education? What licensing flexibilities are there?

Guest Experts

Greg Scott is the IS manager for the College of Business at Oregon State University, responsible for operational supervision of all IT services, tactical and strategic planning, technology purchases, vendor relationships, and program promotion. Greg has worked in this capacity for 15 years. His department has 18 servers, 4.5 TB of network storage; tape backup and anti-virus services, network management and security services, and an extensive array of end user software. All servers are running Windows 2000 and have been in native mode since last June. They completed the desktop upgrade to Windows 2000 last December. A unique feature of OSU's IS department is that it also includes a profit center engaged in quality assurance work for technology companies, with clients such as clients such as Hewlett Packard, Intel, Novell, and Microsoft. This program exists to provide students with an onsite internship experience and it averages about 2,000 hours of testing a month.

TonyTony Saxman is the Instructional Computing Coordinator at the College of Business at Oregon State University. He manages the user side of OSU's network and is responsible for installing, maintaining and upgrading 300 client computers, as well as providing user support for faculty and staff and administering a computer lab with 140 PCs for student use. Prior to working in IS, Tony worked in the mental health field for 13 years, then went back to college and earned a degree in Business Administration along with a good deal of work towards a minor in Computer Science including certification as a UNIX system administrator. His initial IS work in the for-profit world included managing IT for a retail store chain with more than 60 outlets. He's now been with OSU for nearly 5 years and believes that his experience as a therapist, a business manager, and as an IS manager provide a unique background for supporting end users and maintaining and upgrading systems.

Co-Hosts

Bob_Mahoney   Judith_Boettcher
Bob Mahoney is our visiting TechTalk Technology Anchor for this event. Bob is a Senior Network Engineer in MIT's Network Operations Group, where he has worked since 1993. Bob established and manages MIT's Network Security Team, and contributes to a number of ongoing technical projects. He also assists the Common Solutions Group in tracking calendaring and security issues for its members. Prior to MIT, he was the Network Manager for Plymouth State College in NH, where he designed PSC's first campus network. Bob is currently a Co-Chair for the IETF Calendaring and Scheduling Working Group. Bob has a BA in History and a BS in Computer Science.

Co-host Judith Boettcher is the Executive Director of CREN. Together, Bob and Judith will ask the really tough questions—and relay the questions you email to them at expert@cren.net.

Background & Resources

While it's not really a "resource," you might enjoy a live peek inside the College of Business at Oregon State University's server room. Note that on that Web document there is a list of additional classroom Webcams (left side) which permits you to take a real-time tour of some of OSU's classrooms and labs.

One of the very best ways to get background on an issue is by reviewing the audio, transcript, and resource list from any related Tech Talks which have been previously broadcast and are now fully archived. It's just not possible, given current technology, to have archived anything previous about the planning for and implementation of a specific technology - Office XP - that isn't available yet. However, many of the considerations discussed in Planning for Windows 2000 in Higher Education: Some Starting Questions and Answers with Paul Hill and David Bodnar last November 30 remain valid for consideration of large-scale implementation of new software. Ditto for much of the discussion in Interoperability and Deployment of Windows 2000 with Richard A. Jones and Ken Lanphar from December 9, 1999.

In the case of a new product, clearly the manufacturer is an unmatched resource for information. Microsoft in Education is a starting place to such additional resources as its XP Resources for Educators page. Linked to that page are dozens of additional resources, including some very useful PDF documents.

Here's a recent Anchor Desk article by writer David Coursey, who's been using the XP Beta now for some time and likes it. What will the licensing fee system be like? Well, who knows. But here's another Anchor Desk article by Patrick Houston, who's inclined to speculate.

Getting up to Speed with XP is a Lycos Network group review by Scot Finnie, Serdar Yegulalp, Neil Randall, and Dave Methvin.

TechWeb also joins the chorus of those trying to determine when and how Office XP will become available.

And, many thanks to Daniel Willson of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and others from the University Web Developer's List who shared these links with us: