[OT?] Best Practices for Scientific Computing

[Bob Drzyzgula]

Has anyone ever encountered a managment-oriented, MBA-speak
document which outlines "best practices" for scientific and/or
research computing? At work, we're struggling against an
"enterprise-wide" deployment of Windows 2000 and Active
Dirctory, the details of which [1] have us deeply concerned
that we will soon be severely constrained in our ability to
continue our use of Unix- and Linux-based systems as our
primary computing platform. Research being only 10% of the
organization, we're kind of in a tail-wagging-the-dog
situaion, so the best-case outcome would probably be if
we could simply convince them that they'll be better off
just leaving us alone...

If anyone has or can tell me where to find documents
describing generally accepted paths to excellence in
research computing, and you can share them, I'd be most
apprecitive. I found one document that is the kind of
thing I'm looking for:

 http://www.itc.virginia.edu/rctf/rctf_final_report.pdf

but more would be better.

Thanks,
--Bob Drzyzgula

[1] Single domain, enterprise-wide, if that means anything
to you.