KPMG agrees year 2000 deal

KPMG Peat Marwick has signed a worldwide agreement with US software developer Viasoft that will provide the firm’s clients with access to solutions that use the company’s systems workbench technology, a suite of integrated software re-engineering tools. KPMG’s Global 2000 practice, its service to convert or change enterprise-wide systems before the new Millennium, will use the Viasoft technology across North America. Other countries will be handled on a “case by case” basis, the firm said.

In Britain, the National Computing Centre has announced a series of Cobol training courses designed to help users of legacy systems which are not Year 2000-compliant to get to grips with the programming issues involved.

NCC professional services director, Dr John Perkins, said he believed many companies had simply left it too late to tackle the problem. He said: “There is great demand from our members to join our new Year 2000 Solutions groups, but many of the people who arrive at the meetings have only just begun to consider the issue.”