Novell TTP Organization
The Novell Technology Transfer Partners (TTP) is an international group of colleges and universities that have made a substantial commitment to campus IT implementations using Novell technology. TTP was started in the early 1980's with 14 universities whose goal was to share their networking experiences in order to leverage the knowledge of their diverse campus computing environments. The group has now grown to be a more comprehensive group of loyal Novell higher education customers that not only share information with each other, but with the software developers and business units at Novell. Perhaps no other group has more influence on software development at Novell than the TTP members.
The primary goals of the TTP group are as follows:
- Share successes and failures on their campuses for other campuses to be able to learn from their experiences.
- Solicit information and constructive assistance from other campuses with similar software usage for best practices and recommended configurations.
- Network among peers to leverage relationships in career advancement.
- Mentor and serve as examples to other members through the list serve, the annual TTP conference and marketing materials such as white papers, success stories or articles for the Novell Academic Portal and the monthly Novell Academic Newsletter.
- Provide feedback to Novell software development teams on product roadmaps, patch development, bug reports and resolution, and Novell solutions.
- Provide feedback to Novell on leveraging relationships on their campuses for Novell sales to better meet the needs of the individual campuses.
- Provide feedback to other Novell business units to better meet the needs of the academic community in licensing programs, marketing, technical support, etc.
Membership and Confidentiality
Because the primary method of communication within the TTP organization is the TTP list serve, membership is restricted to maintain a reasonable number of messages for members to be able to manage. Additionally, the messages need to be of a nature that is substantive and not simply too many types of responses. In that light, membership is restricted to two or three members per campus. We ask that the members be very technical and be senior IT staff. This is the group that implements and manages the software, not the CIO or staff that plans strategy. On very large campuses, more members have been allowed due to the size of the IT staff, but in those cases the person joining the group is asked to help manage the use of TTP information within their IT teams, again to minimize the volume of messages while at the same time being able to share as much information as possible.
Members also are committing to share information on the list serve, not just monitor messages. We are looking to members that will contribute as well and learn from the information made available on the TTP list serve.
In order to become a member of the Novell TTP organization, the campus must sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA). Not only do members receive non disclosure information from Novell, but the NDA applies to information shared between TTP members as well. Member campus must be willing to share their failures so that other campuses can learn from their experience. Other TTP members must be sensitive to the nature of this kind of information and recognize that employees of other member institutions are putting themselves on the line in order assist other TTP members and let them learn from experience. Members who do not abide by the nature of the NDA will not only be removed from the TTP membership, but may also be held to the resolution terms of the Non Disclosure Agreement.
Novell TTP Advisory Board
Each year members of the TTP group elect four members to the TTP Advisory Board. The Advisory Board members serve two year terms and help direct the TTP organization. The primary role of the Advisory Board is to help construct the agenda of the annual TTP conference. They also help in conducting the conference and coordinating member presentations. In addition, the Advisory Board members represent the TTP members in providing feedback to specific business units at Novell as the needs arise. The TTP organization is sponsored by Novell with a designated manager assigned to monitoring the needs of the group. Currently Matt Clayton at Novell functions in that role. The TTP Advisory Board works with this manager to organize the Novell resources available to the TTP members.
TTP Portal
In order to join the TTP group, you can join the TTP Portal where NDA documents are shared. You will then be added to the TTP list serve after all of the approvals are met. Please note that the first person to join the TTP Portal from your campus will be listed as the primary TTP contact for your campus. The primary contact will be responsible for managing and approving or removing as needed all of the TTP members for your campus.