tlug: Network maintainers?

[Frank Bennett <bennett@example.com>]

At a committee meeting here today, it was mentioned that we might
(_might_) be able to hire in network maintenance services from an
outside contractor.

This is really good news if it matures into actuality, because it
would take a load of not-very-welcome work off my back.  However,
after having tangled with the clutter of MS workstations in
public-access areas of the faculty, I also know that we
desperately need properly networked terminals --- X-terminals ---
to maintain a certain degree of discipline over the state in
which machines are in when they send mail and use other network
facilities.

This (X) is only just now becoming a viable and sufficiently
glitzy alternative for a social science faculty, with the
introduction of Applixware-J; and I am really quite worried that
the works will be turned over to a Microsoft mechanic, after
which we'll end up stuck with this mess permanently (but then
again, all is for the best in this best of all possible networks
...).

Can anyone recommend a firm that services the Nagoya area, and
could shepherd the development of about 50 open-access machines,
about 30 staff machines and a half-dozen servers (at the moment
these are providing mail and a bit of WWW service, and that's it
--- but we need lots of basic improvements, like the installation
of a backup system for machines other than the server I maintain
:).  Web site maintenance will also probably be on the wish-list.

The faculty is pretty solid Win95 territory, so that will need to
be maintained, but the public-access kit really needs Unix ideas
if this bundle of wires is ever going to start working at more
than half capacity.

I must stress that there are a _lot_ of contingencies in this.
There is talk of hiring an individual instead, because that is
bureaucratically easier to manage.  Some of us want to hire the
services of a firm, or at least explore the possibility
seriously, but we don't yet know whether this will be possible.

If you know of anyone who could provide the sort of service
described above, please send me their contact details or ask them
to call me.  Then if something _does_ move here, we will get in
touch.

Sorry to bother the list with this --- but then again, what
better way to settle the question of whether computing expertise
exists in Japan outside of Tokyo?

Cheers,
-- 
-x80
Frank G Bennett, Jr         @@
Faculty of Law, Nagoya Univ () email: bennett@example.com
Tel: +81[(0)52]789-2239     () WWW:   http://rumple.soas.ac.uk/~bennett/
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