Present: Bill O'Riordan (Chairman), Andrew Herbert (Citrix), Koji Tajima (FECIT), Andrew Watson (OMG), Ian Davies (Marconi Communications), Andy Lingard (Marconi Electronic Systems), John Brenner (ICL), Bob Briscoe (BT), Mike Revett (BT), Neil Mason (Marconi Communications), Bent Thomsen (ICL), Lone Leth Thomsen (ICL), Oyvind Hannsen (Adger College, formerly University of Tromso), Richard Hayton (Citrix), Rob van der Linden (Citrix), Eddie Bleasdale (Netproject), Eric Palmer, Dave Otway (Citrix), Laurence Jordan (Citrix), Zhixue Wu (Citrix).
1 WELCOME AND REVIEW OF AGENDA, MINUTES AND ACTIONS
Apologies were noted from France Telecom.
The minutes of the last MB meeting were approved and signed after noting an error in the spelling of the names of the ICL representatives.
There were no matters arising, outside of agenda items for this meeting.
As this was the final formal ANSA meeting, the Management and Technical boards were combined.
During the technical part of the day, presentations were given on the final deliverables (see item 3 below) and a guest talk by Eddie Bleasdale on the topic of Open Source Software.
Bill O'Riordan thanked Eddie for his stimulating talk and robust defence of the Open Source concept.
2 STATUS OF ANSA CONSORTIUM - Andrew Herbert
There had been no changes in Consortium Membership during the final period. The potential application from OpenConnexion mentioned in October has not materialized.
3 TECHNICAL PROGRESS - Andrew Herbert
Andrew summarized the Technical Board meeting and overall progress against budget. The 1998 plan has been completed with final deliverables consisting of
Citrix has ongoing commitments to support FlexiNet use by the FollowMe project partners until March. This is running smoothly and prototype applications are already running in the field.
The Management Board unanimously accepted the deliverables as completing the 1998 plan and the ANSA Phase III objectives overall. The team were congratulated on the excellent quality of the results produced.
Bob Briscoe noted that there were groups within BT making use of FlexiNet and that these activities were addressing some of the telecommunications aspects of the original FlexiNet proposal. To his mind this gave FlexiNet a stronger match to its original goals than Richard Hayton had allowed in his review of the project.
4 MANAGEMENT REPORT - Andrew Herbert
Andrew reported on cost and effort against budget and availability of deliverables against schedule.
All members are up to date with payments.
Eric Palmer reported he had audited the final figures. In its wind down period, the project had not utilized all the "ESPRIT hours" potentially available to it, as was expected, but even so sponsors received over twice the effort in output compared to their financial input. In a review of ANSA from its invention in 1985 through to the end of 1998 Eric noted the project had cost approximately £12M and delivered 145 man years of effort.
The meeting unanimously accepted the cost and effort statement for the final quarter, and hence the whole project.
Andrew Herbert thanked Eric for his support as the sponsor's auditor, helping APM, then Citrix, manage the ANSA accounts. This was unanimously endorsed by the Management Board. Andrew noted that Eric would be continuing to help Citrix close down its remaining ESPRIT project related accounts.
5 IPR
Andrew Herbert reported that, having reviewed the matter further, Citrix was no longer considering patenting of ANSA IPR, as the key ideas were exposed in public papers.
Discussion then turned to the future of ANSA IPR. Rob van der Linden demonstrated a CD-ROM-based "web site" that is being prepared. The disc contains an indexed collection of documents and software from all the phases of the ANSA Work Programme. From the Alvey days only the primary outputs are available. For Phase II and particularly Phase III, a more complete set has been captured. Documents have been sorted into primary outputs, briefings and management reports and working papers. The latter have been "lightly pruned" to remove obvious duplicate or empty documents.
The disc will be updated with the results of the FollowMe project in April and then distributed to sponsors.
It was agreed that in terms of content:
In discussion it was agreed Citrix would arrange for BT to take long term custody of the www.ansa.co.uk web site and manage public release of its content.
The Management Board unanimously agreed these provisions.
6 PROJECT END
Andrew Herbert confirmed budget had been obtained for a final event, and planning had begun with a search for names and addresses of former staff, secondees, Management and Technical board representatives etc. The timing had slipped to late Spring / early Summer.
Andrew Herbert formally thanked Bill O'Riordan for his support and service as Chairman of the ANSA Management and Technical Boards. Bill had helped Andrew recover ANSA from disruptions in APM management in 1996/7 and his style of running meetings and participation the traditional College dinners that followed was much appreciated. The Management Board unanimously expressed their gratitude to Bill and applauded the award of an "ANSA tankard".
Continuing with awards, Andrew was proud to present ANSA tankards to all the former ANSA team members who remained on the engineering and administrative staff of Citrix. Andrew stated that the project was very much a team effort and he was grateful to all ANSA team members past and present for their contribution towards the success of the project.
Finally, Bill O'Riordan presented an ANSA tankard to Andrew Herbert and suitably embarrassed him with kind words about the leadership he had given to the project and in managing its relationship with the sponsors.
The sponsors unanimously agreed that Citrix had completed its obligations as Project Manager and should be released from the Project Management Agreement with effect from the date of the meeting and the ANSA Phase III Work Programme be formally closed.