IMSMA News

Follow up to Reply from Alan Arnold

Thanks for your update and answer to my questions. I now got an idea of the timeframe and what is going on with ETHZ, V3 and NG. My idea of a periodic IMSMA newsletter didn't get any comment from your side. I would like to know more about the modified/new concepts in NG (for example the area concept) and the base technology where NG is based on to train and prepare myself and our staff for the new system.

In para 3 you say "... we will no longer be focusing our limited resources on maintenance and administration of the system as we did in the past." but in para 5 you say "... on-going 2nd level support for V3 ...", "Despite the fact that we will be ending our development relationship with ETHZ you can be certain that we will continue to support V3 until the new release is available to everyone.", "... the role of ETHZ will be tapering back over the next few months as they will not be directly involved in the development of the new system." and in para 6 "Once this update [IMSMA Service Pack/Update sometime in the early fall] has been completed we will probably not be performing any additional updates to V3."

The huge know-how of the ETHZ will not be available any more in the near future (after 2004) and the limited resources on maintenance need to build-up the skills first.
 
The only way the MAC Afghanistan can "survive" the next two years without any additional updates to V3 from the GICHD is in building its own IMSMA V3 development and maintenance capacity. I request the developer password of IMSMA for UNMACA.