Comments on computer center policy

It looks like I will be touching on some of the topics that have just been mentioned, because some of them will be affected by whatever policy people might use for obtaining or selling data-processing services outside of the college environment. First of all, I'm sure each of you at one time or another has considered this possibility. It looks immediately attractive if for no other reason than that it brings some extra income to the college, thereby defraying somewhat the cost of the hardware and staff that you have in your center. Another advantage that you can achieve by selling some time and getting a little extra income is that perhaps you could support a somewhat larger computer facility than you might otherwise be able to afford. Eight more K of core is ?wfully attractive, or an extra disk drive or something like that can be real, real handy. If you can drum up enough business to support this sort of thing, you can put yourself in real good shape.

The other area would be in personnel. With the extra income you can support additional personnel. I'm not going to identify the particular uses that we have made—unless I'm asked—in selling services, but I'm just going to give you the general implications of a decision to sell data-processing services outside the college.