Standards
All societies attempt to balance their member's individual freedom against the commonweal. This conflict also manifests itself in the information technology context. Increased flexibility and choice in accomplishing technology-dependent goals often results in decreased group value due to incompatabilities and increased support costs. For example, electronic collaboration is possible only if all the members of a workgroup use the same brand and version of wordprocessing software. If some use a different wordprocessor, sharing documents gets more complex and sometimes impossible. Other costs are more subtle. Support of duplicate functionality; e.g., two wordprocessors, increases support staffs' skillset requirment and decreases the time they have to support other functionality; e.g., spreadsheets. On the other hand, the information technology world is far from static. Flexibility and creativity are prerequisites to informed planning and growth.
Current Standards Issues:
Wintel vs. Macintosh
Computer Services has never provided equal support to the Intel and Macintosh platforms. Historically at UMPI, Macintosh computers were used by folks who either had a need that only Macintosh could fulfill or prefered the advanced graphical interface of the early Macintosh operating system. Before computer networking, this wasn't really a problem. Nowadays, supporting two platforms significantly increases the cost of delivering basic functionality. We just don't have the resources or expertise to support the Macintosh as well as we support Intels. We're not the only ones facing this issue. Many colleges and universities traditionally only supported Macintosh computers. As technology changes and evolves we have to make informed decisions about which technologies we need and can afford to support.
