ABSTRACT

The attitude of the administration in establishing or ignoring the goals of academic and administrative computing will influence the amount of demand for computing resources. Perhaps the first thing to do when estimating demand for systemwide computing is to analyze the demands or needs of users that are pushing against the computing center's resources. Demand may be looked at from any of several viewpoints. One viewpoint would be to classify demand by hardware configuration. For example, at the University of Nevada the computing resources might best be described as an educational network serving a research arm, two higher educational divisions, and a community college group. With regard to the first approach, university computing personnel are all reasonably familiar with the classic measurements of capacity of various computer components. In a system of several levels of colleges, universities, and research institutes, demand for computing is most frequently described in terms of hardware or personnel needs.