Between the last months of 1998 and the first half of 1999 the personnel of the Bologna Astronomical Observatory and the Department of Astronomy of the University of Bologna moved to the new building in via Ranzani. Part of the people of both institutions were already working in a portion of the structure but the transfer of the whole personnel implied moving all the computers at the time hosted in the old tower in via Zamboni. The definition of the new logistic for the hardware, the re-wiring of the computer network and the re-installation of all the computers required a strong effort for the computer center staff.
The layout of the new building, much more rational than the eighteenth century tower, improved the distribution of the common facilities of the computer center and also the performance of the network.
During the year, computer facilities have been upgraded as far as both cpu power and network are concerned. Some new people have joined the computer center staff adding support for the maintenance of the informatic lab and for the numerical analysis and data reduction fields.
In the second half of 1999 a consistent part of the computer center activity was addressed to the upgrade of the workstations operating systems to comply with the Y2K problem.