At the Erasmus University we are preparing for a large scale introduction of Windows NT on desktop systems (i386 architecture). A top priority issue is the accomodation of a wide variety of required functionality (and accompanying user skill levels), ranging from simple administrative tasks to the full flexibility typically expected on research stations.

We forsee a shift in the way many research projects will be using computing resources as a result of moving to Windows NT. Many researchers will be looking into integrating applications and services that currently are available on Unix-class servers.

A number of these projects involve large data sets for which it's important to develop a model of storage ensuring availability and ease-of-use to both traditional processing on time-sharing machines and the newly deployed NT desktop tools.

Paul Kranenburg
Erasmus University
Burg. Oudlaan 50
Rotterdam, NL