Resumen de System administration research: part 3: challenges to system administrators
The preceding two articles in this series tiptoed around the discipline of objective knowledge. How can system administration kept within the boundaries of science and protected from the specter of personal opinion? The answer was straightforward: the scientific method, i. e., a mixture of inspired inquiry and exacting self-criticism. To round up the series, I would like top present number of challenges to the system administration community, challenges that indicate a few of the important problem areas we have to examine in the coming years. This article will be of a more speculative nature than the previous pieces, with the aim of stimulating activity in the field; the list will be no complete, but you can fill in the blaks yourself. Speculation provides the creative impetus for a rational inqury. System administration touches on a wide realm of topics; it is loaded with technical and social issues; it requires creativity and analisys; and we know very little about the empirical (verifiable, factual) basis for the subject. In short, it is a jungle waiting to be explore.
