请教项目术语business sponsor的译名。

http://www.qconbeijing.com/sponsors.shtml

赞助单位

Active Network
简要介绍：
活跃网络（The Active Network）公司是全球领先的互联网在线产品及服务的软件及解决方案提供商。总部位于美国加利福尼亚州的圣地亚哥。

Adobe
简要介绍：
Adobe 是全球最大、最多元化的软件公司之一，以其卓越的品质享誉世界，旗下拥有众多深受广大客户信赖和认可的软件品牌。

JCP
简要介绍：
Java Community Process (JCP) program has fostered the evolution of the Java platform in cooperation with the international Java developer community.

微软中国
简要介绍：
Microsoft公司致力于帮助全球的个人用户和企业展现他们所有的潜力。这是我们的使命。我们所做的一切都反映了这一使命以及兑现该使命的价值。
...

http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/推动/1315463
推动 (tuīdòng)
1. verb promote

wherestip wrote:

... scratch the above.

Without much context to go by, it's hard to tell whether this "business sponsor" actually refers to the role Hicks himself eventually played, or to outside sponsorship by venture capitalists and/or corporations. I tend to think it refers to the latter. So perhaps "骨干" is not the right term. I would suggest either "商务上的赞助单位" or "资本主办单位".

An extranet is a private network that uses Internet protocols, network connectivity, and possibly the public telecommunication system to securely share part of an organization's information or operations with suppliers, vendors, partners, customers or other businesses. An extranet can be viewed as part of a company's intranet that is extended to users outside the company (e.g.: normally over the Internet). It has also been described as a "state of mind" in which the Internet is perceived as a way to do business with a preapproved set of other companies business-to-business (B2B), in isolation from all other Internet users. In contrast, business-to-consumer (B2C) involves known server(s) of one or more companies, communicating with previously unknown consumer users.

Briefly, an extranet can be understood as an intranet mapped onto the public Internet or some other transmission system not accessible to the general public, but managed by more than one company's administrator(s). For example, military networks of different security levels may map onto a common military radio transmission system that never connects to the Internet. Any private network mapped onto a public one is a virtual private network (VPN). In contrast, an intranet is a VPN under the control of a single company's administrator(s).

wherestip wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extranet



clearwater,

Indeed. Sometimes the lack of mention of certain facts surrounding a situation also contributes to context. And indeed like you said, there seems to be no prior mention of what this lack of "business sponsor" refers to.

In this situation, I would interpret this "lack of business sponsor" as just one more difficulty that the person who took on the project had to face. IMO, this was having no outside sponsorship by "suppliers, vendors, partners, customers, or other businesses", besides the project being "years late", and "millions of dollars over budget". These entities are mainly business partners and clients who would directly benefit from the availabilty of a comprehensive and user-friendly Toyota dealer extranet. In the spirit of mutual benefit and cooperation, they definitely could have shared in the development expenses. BTW, as you may have noticed, I've directly quoted the typical users from the Wikipedia definition of "extranet", as this was the easiest thing for me to do.

Basically, the original sentence refers to the lack of resource and financial support coming from outside the Toyota company. I'll leave it to you to come up with the best Chinese terminology to describe this. I personally would call it "金融主办单位".

clearwater wrote:

So I still think 'a business sponsor' here refers to a people, not an organization.