April 10, 2006
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Message from Tom West.....
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Dear NLR Members and Friends: April 8, 2006
I want to inform you that as of Thursday April 6, 2006, the NLR Board voted to discontinue pursuit of the merger with UCAID. After nearly a year of concerted efforts to achieve the merger, the NLR Board has concluded the two organizations are not aligned on key principles and the overall strategy for serving the research and education community as a combined organization.
Therefore, with the NLR nationwide infrastructure completed; a comprehensive range of services and capabilities fully available; several significant and research and science projects (including Teragrid, OptIPuter, and Cheetah supported by NSF grants, UltraScience and ESNet, under DOE, NASA, and Pacific Wave) already utilizing NLR; and, a major network research project (VINI) about to be launched, NLR has determined that its full attention and energy must be focused on executing its core mission:
“To advance the research, clinical and educational goals of members and other institutions by establishing and maintaining a nationwide advanced network infrastructure”
As you know, NLR is based on putting the control, the power and the promise of the uses the NLR network infrastructure in the hands of our nation’s scientists and researchers. Over the past several months the NLR Network Research Council and the NLR Science Research Council, under the leadership of NLR’s Chief Scientist Dave Farber, have been patiently waiting for the merger process to be completed. In the coming weeks these two councils will be engaged to provide the NLR Board and CEO with advice and counsel for reaching out and involving the broader research community and how the capabilities of NLR might be best exploited over the coming years to advance science and network research.
The technical support for the NLR backbone is based on its being an extension of the regional optical networks of its members as well as being connected to other national and international networks to facilitate research. This calls for a team effort. This past week over 50 technical and administrative personnel, representing all the NLR members and the technical support services of NLR, met in Pittsburgh for an All-Hands meeting. Wendy Huntoon, NLR Executive Director of Operations, led the meeting that dealt with a wide range of topics designed to facilitate integration of the work of both the NLR teams and the member support teams. This group is charged, energized and ready to render topnotch support services to researchers and educators across the nation.
NLR is disappointed the merger with UCAID could not be achieved. I want to thank each of you for your efforts, advice, support and patience during this lengthy process.
I would now call on you to join us in focusing all of our energies on helping NLR achieve its mission and thereby contribute to the advancement of our society through the work of the network researchers, scientists, engineers and the wide range of researchers/educators and others who will make use of the NLR backbone capacity and resources.
Sincerely,
Tom West
NLR
Posted by rab5 at 04:34 PM
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