Companies are finally acknowledging the scale and impact ofmillennium dating on their computer systems. But if they are expectingtheir supplier to sort out the problem, they're in for an unpleasantsurprise, writes Guy Dresser.
Over the last four weeks my desk has been swamped with information about coping with the millennium ‘time bomb’ – the much discussed problem which, on 1 January 2000, will strike computer systems that cope only with two-digit year changes, finding it impossible to differentiate the four-digit change.
Scarcely had the accounting software industry begun pumping out its usual bumph on the issue when the IT consultancy profession jumped on the bandwagon. Between now and 1 January 2000 there will barely be a week which does not see someone, somewhere, staging a conference on the impact of millennium dating. Yet none of this intensive marketing will help systems users to sleep easier.
Paul Williams, a computer assurance partner at Arthur Andersen and chairman of the English ICA’s IT faculty, warned: ‘It just never ceases to amaze me how unprepared businesses are for the problem. If they haven’t started planning, it is too late. And even for those who have begun work there is not enough time to sort out all systems before the end of the millennium.’
The raft of proposals, suggestions and barefaced hype currently emanating from the IT consultancy market reveals one fact: no silver bullet or magic wand will sweep IT managers’ nightmare scenarios away at a single stroke.
The only real solution is a wide-ranging systems upgrade, a line-by-line code rewrite or costly tinkering at the margins to ensure the year-change doesn’t cause organisations’ mission-critical systems to go belly up.
There have been many reports recently about software companies or IT consultancies announcing the ‘first’ solution to the problem. It’s amazing how many false prophets always seem to come out of the woodwork. Rather like ghouls at the site of a particularly nasty car accident, they have nothing to add to the situation except confusion.
Research indicates that awareness of the millennium dating problem is rising rapidly among FTSE-250 companies, but well over half of these organisations have yet to implement four-figure date codes in their financial systems.
So will business grind to a halt on 1 January 2000? It is likely that anyone who has failed to modify some of their key systems will find themselves seriously inconvenienced – perhaps to the extent that their accounts will need more than a little qualifying.
Steve Farr, product marketing manager at software supplier Systems Union, warned: ‘Most IT consultants working on this problem are fully booked between now and the end of the millennium – the alternative is simply to replace old systems with new ones. In many cases this is the cheaper and easier option.’
So much for the software industry’s solution – and a predictable one at that. But the consultants are little better. If police failed to cordon off an accident scene and watched impassively as other cars crashed into the back of the wreckage, they would be accused of negligence. What then are we to make of an industry that must have seen this dating problem coming for years?