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May 1999 23
Y2K MIGHT HAVE UNEXPECTED BENEFITS
Fixing the Y2K Problem will be expen-sive but will also result in the far moreefficient use of IT resources, according tomany economists and media consultants.
Mitch Ratcliffe, president of consult-ing firm Internet/Media Strategies, saidthe Y2K inventory, remediation, and test-ing processes will yield insights into mak-ing future IT investments more efficientand better integrated with overall busi-ness objectives.
Meanwhile, companies that have cre-ated niches for themselves with Y2K-related products will benefit fromexpanded uses for their products.
For example, Ratcliffe said, one ven-dor will be able to offer its server-cloningproduct, which helps determine Y2Kreadiness, to companies that want to testnew operating systems, such as Windows2000, before going live with them.
Lou Ryan, CEO of software manufac-turer ClickNet, said his company shouldalso benefit from the Y2K Problem. Thecompany’s flagship product is a networkauditing application that helps IT man-agers keep track of issues such as secu-rity, maintenance, reliability, and con-figuration.
Ryan said an add-on Y2K-testingapplication has introduced ClickNet’snetwork auditing application to busi-nesses that otherwise may not have pur-chased it. ❖
The Y2K problem will have mini-mal effect on North Americanutilities, according to a reportsubmitted to the US Departmentof Energy by the North Ameri-
can Electric Reliability Council. Thecouncil is a nonprofit organization in theUS, Canada, and northern Mexico thatserves as a clearinghouse for informationnecessary to ensure uninterrupted powersupply.
The group’s report said most utilitieshave already prepared or will be pre-pared for the Y2K Problem.
In addition, the report noted, safetysystems in nuclear generating plants,which safety advocates have been watch-ing closely, should be ready for Y2K.
However, a technician’s error duringY2K testing caused a seven-hour lockupof monitoring systems at the Peach Bot-tom Atomic Power Station in the US inFebruary. A backup computer that wasnot Y2K-compliant froze. The technicianbelieved the testing command had notbeen accepted and tried it again. How-ever, the system had switched to the pri-mary monitoring computer, which thenalso froze. The plant continued operat-ing.
A US Nuclear Regulatory Commissionspokesperson said the affected part of thesystem was not mission-critical. MichaelMarriotte, executive director of thewatchdog group Nuclear Informationand Resource Service, said the incidentnonetheless provided evidence that vul-nerable plants should be shut down as thenew year approaches, as a precaution.
EXPERTS OPEN THE WINDOW ON Y2K TECHNIQUE
Experts disagree over the effectivenessof a popular Y2K-remediation tech-nique, known as windowing.
Many vendors use windowing, inwhich programs are reset so they willcorrectly interpret dates as belonging to
Utilities Say They Are Ready for Y2Keither the 20th or 21st centuries. Forexample, a program can be set with apivot year of 30, so the application willinterpret the years ending in “00” to“29” as being in the 21st century, whileit will interpret years ending in “30” to“99” as being in the 20th century.
There is thus a window of time inwhich windowing users can stave off theY2K Problem while continuing to usetwo-digit year fields. But some problemshave arisen in the method, one consul-tant said.
Michael Harden, president of CenturyTechnology Services, a Y2K testing andremediation firm, said he has seen prob-lems with windowing that included in-compatible pivot dates in an organiza-tion’s applications and code in which pro-grammers forgot that 2000 is a leap year.
Others, however, say windowing is fast,effective, and more economical than dateexpansion, in which much of the code andall of a program’s modules must be exam-ined and, in many cases, reprogrammedwith four-digit years.
Southtrust Bank Senior Vice PresidentMarvin Thornton said every softwarevendor he contracts with used window-ing under provisions of existing softwaresupport contracts, and he was satisfiedthe approach worked.
Gartner Group analyst Jim Duggansaid expansion is five times more expen-sive than windowing, which has provenitself to be an effective fix.
Editor: Greg Goth, Computer, 10662 LosVaqueros Circle, PO Box 3014, Los Alamitos,CA 90720-1314; [email protected]
Y2K in Brief
Selected Y2K ResourcesThis month’s Y2K resources feature information about compliance in the data-base industry.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Ken_North/year2000.htm:Consultant Ken North’s Y2K page.http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,360733,00.html: PCWeek’sanalysis of compliance by IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Sybase.http://www.sysmod.com/y2kxbase.htm: Resources on Access, Oracle, PowerBuilder, and Xbase by Patrick O’Beirne, managing director of Systems Modelling.http://www.informix.com/informix/products/year2000.htmhttp://www.oracle.com/year2000http://www.sybase.com/inc/corpinfo/year2000_index.html
