<h1>The "Business" of Pismere</h1>

Slightly modified from the 
<a href= http://loohooloo.mit.edu/people/WJM/Ed_Tech_TOC.htm>Educational Technology Council Report</a>:<p>
The MIT Information Systems organization (IS) follows one overarching
principle in allocating academic computing resources: the Academic
Computing Environment should contribute to the continuing improvement of
education at MIT. Among opportunities for educational improvement, IS
attempts to support those that achieve as many of the following four ends
as possible:
<ol>
<li>Serve many students, rather than few.
<li>Serve the core of the MIT curriculum rather than its periphery,
including General Institute Requirements and large
        introductory subjects in popular departments.
<li>Seek innovation and creativity, rather than simple automation of
traditional approaches to education.
<li>Increase technological equity among departments, rather than
decrease it.
</ol><p>
Pismere is a response to one of the limitations of Athena which was
enumerated in MIT's Education Technology Council's report.<p>
Among the most crucial limitations of Athena, as we look towards the
future, are:<p>
3. Inability to make the most effective use of commercial software. The
relatively complex process of integrating commercial software with the
Athena environment required to ensure the secure and reliable availability
of software, occasionally creates a barrier to quick, effective
exploitation of the latest products-some of which potentially have great
value to us-and sometimes requires us to continue to support homegrown
applications when commercial products could now do the job more effectively
and inexpensively. Operating systems and applications on Athena are
frequently a generation behind to accommodate the integration with software
resources and the file system, thereby making it difficult for some useful
applications to make it to Athena.<p>
Pismere does not try to address many of the other goals and issues
enumerated in this report. However, it is expected to provide a foundation
for making progress in other areas.<p>
Although Pismere is sponsored by Academic Computing, people working on the
project have always expected the work to meet the needs of many areas of
Administrative Computing. Design decisions attempt to meet the needs of
both user communities. The business model which will address how the
Institute will actually pay for Pismere and sustain it is currently a task
in the Discovery Process.
