Question 1: The arguments for local LAN administrators to yield to centralized control.
Answer: Realistically speaking, the most compelling argument would be for management to exercise its right to institute the program at the highest level, and simply insist and demand that the programs be instituted, and that the control be yielded. This is essential in order for the individual network managers (66 of them, at least, for we can assume that there are at least three people in each of the 22 networks who consider themselves to be the "real" managers) to realize that autonomy is over.
However, the "do it or you're fired" strategy is seldom effective for intellectual workers, such as the people who will be responsible for implementing the modification. In this case, a very compelling argument would be for the company to appoint or bring the key network leaders together for a retreat in which the difficulties of the current configuration, company wide, are explained in detail. This would be critical since if there are 22 networks, there are 22 groups of people who have been trying to solve communications problems on an ad hoc basis and have probably been wondering why the company has failed to act on the new technology.
For example, there will be very few problems predicted in terms of resistance to the TCP/IP concept, or the client-server concept. The primary resistance would come, we would think, from being limited to the Star topology, which is efficient but can be inflexible (Boley, Gini, Hastings, Mobasher & Moore, 1998).
Question 2: The probable difficulties and risks associated moving from mainframe to PC?
Answer: This is a concrete systems problem, and the biggest difficulty is going to be to convince each of the 22 network officials that they must resist the temptation to maintain certain elements of their old networks, particularly in the case of legacy software, and, more importantly, legacy wo
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