FLOUR-DANIEL REP SPEAKS AT SPG CONFERENCE---MENTIONS TAVA
SPG Year 2000 Conference and Expo coverage
Dallas, October 22-24, 1997
Covered by Cliff Kurtzman, cliff.kurtzman@year2000.com
For the Year 2000 Information Center, year2000.com
I'll be covering this conference in a series of three mailings over
the next week or two. In this mailing are the following sessions:
Keynote Address: Because the future is in your hands...
Vendor & Tools Selection Strategies
Year 2000 Challenges with Petroleum Process Automation
I'll also provide in my final mailing a listing of the vendors at
the conference and a comparative analysis of the relative
strengths and weaknesses I found between this SPG conference
and the DCI Los Angeles Year 2000 Conference I covered for this
list in late August and early September.
If you wish to unsubscribe from this list or change your
subscription address, please see the note at the end of this
message. (Sorry, but "replying" to this e-mail won't work.)
Our special conference coverage is being sponsored by
SCB Computer Technology, Princeton SOFTECH, Strategia,
Reasoning, Inc., Edge Information Group, the Forecross
Corporation, Prince Software, and Acceler8 Technology.
You will find information from these organizations
labeled as "Sponsor's Message" included with this coverage.
These organizations provided the resources necessary to cover
the conference, so please check out their web sites if you
have a chance. Also, look for a special notice this week in your
e-mailbox from SPG about their upcoming conference in Boston
later this month.
First some disclaimers: some of the presentations I covered
were given by people from organizations that my company has
a business relationship with. Some (including SPG) are
sponsors of the year2000.com web site and even this conference
coverage, both of which my company (The Tenagra Corporation)
operates in conjunction with de Jager and Company. To some
extent, this is no different than a print magazine that does a
story about a company that also happens to be an advertiser.
********** General Impressions
The conference was run in parallel tracks, so I could not
attend every session. Of those sessions I did attend, I'm
only able to briefly summarize some of the key points in the
kind of forum that this newsletter provides. This coverage
does not serve as a replacement for attending the conference,
but hopefully it will give you some flavor for the issues
being addressed by the speakers. Overall, the conference
had a fairly heavy emphasis on embedded systems and the oil
and gas industry, which is not too surprising given the
Dallas location. I estimated that there were about 300
attendees at the conference.
********** Keynote Address: Because the future is in your hands...
Presenter: Ann K. Coffou, Managing Director, Year 2000
Relevance Service
Company: Giga Information Group
Ms. Coffou described three key perspectives that
organizations need to look at with regard to Year 2000:
Computer Systems, Liability and Litigation, and Embedded
Systems. In particular, organizations need to approach
their Y2K projects as one of managing risks: business
risks, personal risks, consumer risks, etc. Unfortunately,
most businesses look at the Year 2000 problem as a strictly
technical issue rather than as a strategic and business
issue. She emphasized the need to examine your supply chain
to determine those organizations that your business is
dependent upon to stay in business. You then need to make
sure your supply chain remains intact, or that you have
back-up plans to deal with a failure in your supply chain
should it occur.
Ms. Coffou noted that the state of Nevada has removed itself
from liability for Y2K related problems and failures.
She observed how unfortunate it is that few
mainstream newspapers cover Year 2000 on a regular basis.
The Financial Times (in London) is really the only
mainstream publication that covers Y2K on a dependable
basis. (I don't recall if it was Ms. Coffou or another
presenter at the conference who indicated that the Wall
Street Journal had explicitly indicated that they did not
intend to step up coverage on the issue until such time as
business failures start to occur. By then, of course, it
will be too late.)
Because many people in the U.S. are aware of the Year 2000
problem, it is often assumed that great progress is being
made to correct affected systems. But this is often not the
case. Ms. Coffou cited a Cap Gemini study indicating that
only 1 in 6 Fortune 500 companies have begun implementing a
full-fledged strategy to achieve Year 2000 compliance. See:
year2000.com
Looking at Y2K from a global perspective, Ms. Coffou noted
that, in the US, UK, and Canada, while many organizations
are aware of the issues involved and are working on planning
what to do about it, very few are actually working in a
comprehensive fashion implementing solutions. Continental
Europe and Australia/New Zealand are somewhat behind the U.S.
While many organizations are aware of the problem, most
are only just beginning the planning stage of figuring out
what to do about it. In the Asian Pacific, Central American
and South American regions, awareness levels are generally
much lower, and many organizations are not even aware of
the issues involved and how the situation will affect their
businesses.
Ms. Coffou noted that there is just over two years left,
which is not much time for a project of this magnitude.
There is no time to delay if organizations are to avoid
failures in mission critical systems.
********** Vendor & Tools Selection Strategies
Presenter: Nanda Nandkishore, President,
nanda@year2000consulting.com
Company: Millennium Consulting, Inc.
Purchasing tools to help in the implementation of a Year
2000 conversion offers numerous benefits. They can provide
built-in expertise, accuracy, repeatability, and completeness.
Rather than "reinventing the wheel," they allow an
organization to increase its productivity and reduce the
human resources necessary to address the conversion process,
and they give the organization a better chance of completing
its projects on time.
In addition to using tools to assist in a conversion process,
consultants and service providers can also be helpful in
reducing costs and in rapidly bringing expertise into your
organization. Consultants and service providers can assist
in building awareness in your organization, helping you
through the tool selection process, helping you set up your
Year 2000 Program Office, supporting your project management,
and bringing you environment and language expertise.
Criteria you might look at in selecting a service provider
are their experience in handling large projects and Year
2000 projects, the length of time they have been in
business, the size of their past contracts and success
rate, the qualifications of individuals that they propose
to work with you, the breadth of tools that they plan to
use, and the vendor's ability to meet your schedule. Also,
consider what levels of guarantee the vendor is willing to
provide and whether or not you believe the vendor is being
realistic in what they are promising you in the way of
results.
When choosing a tool to use in performing a conversion, you
need to look at what environments and operating systems the
tool will run in, what languages and release levels the tool
supports, what components the tools support (e.g., JCL, Load
Modules) and the maturity and vendor history with the tool.
Tools are available that address a number of aspects of a
year 2000 project. Management Tools can provide project
planning, methodology, resource estimation, and tracking.
Management tools can help establish a repository capable of
tracking component definitions, conversion status, and
interdependencies.
Inventory Analysis, Assessment and Estimation Tools include
application impact analyzers, program impact analyzers, data
analyzers and cost estimation tools.
There are a wide variety of tools, vendors and approaches
to automated code conversion. Some organizations set up an
in-house lab, where people within the organization can use a
set of tools and environment provided by the company to
perform conversions on their own code. The advantage of
this is that the people performing the conversions are the
ones that are most familiar with their own code. The
disadvantage of this approach is that each group making a
conversion must learn the conversion tools and process for
themselves.
More commonly, an organization will set up an in-house
factory rather than a lab. The factory may be staffed by
people from their own organization and/or by vendor
provided personnel. In a factory environment, a group of
people are trained in the use of a set of conversion tools,
and then code from various parts of the organization is
brought to them for conversion. The advantage of this
approach is that the people making the conversion have the
opportunity to learn the conversion tools and processes
extensively, making them very productive in the
conversion process.
A third approach is to establish an external conversion
factory with a vendor. With this approach, there is no
requirement for the organization to learn to use the
conversion tools, but it is a requirement to package and
ship the source code.
Mr. Nandkishore mentioned Peritus, Reasoning, MDI, and CCD
Online as examples of vendors that provide tools for field
expansion. Peritus, Reasoning, SEEC, DRI and CCD Online
were mentioned as companies that support windowing.
Configuration Managers are tools that help track multiple
versions of source code, and help track converted code as
brought in from conversion factories. The learning curve
for these tools can be significant if you have not used
them before. Examples given were tools from Computer
Associates and Intersolv.
Source and Data Comparison Utilities can help you verify
what has been changed when the code comes back from being
converted. These tools are useful in the creation of a
testing strategy. Examples were given of tools from
Compuware and Serena.
Data Conversion Tools allow the conversion of pre-existing
data so that it becomes compatible with the revised software.
For example, if you previously stored dates with two digits,
but the revised software expects dates to be represented
with four digits, then data files will need to be converted
to a four digit format. Mr. Nandkishore indicated that most
conversion factories provide data conversion facilities.
A variety of tools can aid in the conversion process. Date
routines can be very helpful if making manual conversions or
future maintenance of converted code. For example, IBM
provides a set of date routines. Bridging facilities can
provide data duplication between new and old formats.
Mr. Nandkishore talked about three levels of testing that it
is necessary to perform. Regression testing makes sure that
everything that worked correctly before the conversion
process still works correctly after the conversion is
completed. Regression testing tools work by comparing
resulting screens, reports, and data files. Tools should
have the ability to remove comparison of fields as specified.
Simulated Execution tools intercept system date requests,
and return to the software a predetermined date. Examples
of date simulators include tools from Viasoft, Mainware,
Isogon, Prince Software, Computer Associates, and Compuware.
The third level of testing involves use of aged data files.
Usually one takes existing data files and ages all the data
by a pre-specified increment. This ensures verification
that transaction dates will be properly handled in the
programs. Dates are often aged by a period of 28 years in
testing, because this interval allows the aged dates to fall
on the same day of the week as the original dates.
Testing needs to ensure that all the modified code is
executed. Test coverage analysis tools can help show which
parts of the code are executed under which test cases.
Online Capture and Replay Tools are useful for capturing
screen output, and provide an ability to re-run an old test
by simulating the same user input.
Mr. Nandkishore noted that no matter what your vendor may
promise in the way of performance or results, you must
consider testing to be your responsibility, and test any
vendor delivered code yourself.
********** Year 2000 Challenges with Petroleum Process Automation
This session consisted of a short introduction followed by
a question and answer session from a panel moderated by Jim
Porter, who is a partner at Coopers & Lybrand. Other
members of the panel included Phil Ihrig (pjihrig@amoco.com),
who is a Planner in the Year 2000 Program Management Office
at Amoco; Ron Quiggins, Director, Shell Services; and Lee
Stogner (l.stogner@ieee.org), who is a Principal Consultant
at Fluor Daniel. Mr. Quiggins also gave a keynote session
at the conference, which I will be covering later.
Mr. Ihrig indicated that the biggest problem faced in the
industry is process control. He estimated that in the
petroleum business, fixing IT (information technology)
applications is only 10-15% of the problem -- embedded
systems are the big issue. The first step is to conduct an
inventory to identify critical devices that need to be
tested for Year 2000 compliance. Talking to manufacturers
about their product's compliancy can be helpful, but it is
only a start. Once delivered to a plant, components are
often customized and built into systems, and this process
introduces problems that the manufacturer may not be
involved with or even aware of. It is essential but often
difficult to schedule tests around the performance of other
normal functions and operations.
Mr. Stogner indicated that there is a lot of denial within
the industry that Year 2000 is anything other than an IT
problem. But there are a lot of small instruments today
that date stamp data and process it. A big problem within
the industry is that there is a lot of equipment that has
been working fine for a long period of time and there is no
one left around who knows the details about how it works
internally. Mr. Stogner also indicated the importance of
setting up an office to manage tracking compliancy
information on components. As an example, a tire
manufacturer sent out 6,000 compliance letters to its
suppliers, but only received 3 responses. An office
needs to be responsible for following up on the responses
and non-responses.
Mr. Porter emphasized that the real complexity of the job is
not the technical solution but the task of integrating so
many systems and components. You need to understand your
vendor's timelines and how it fits with yours. If your
vendor is too late in implementing an upgrade to achieve
compliancy in their product, you may not have enough time to
install that upgrade in your plant and test it before Year
2000 arrives.
A question from the audience asked what the overall Y2K
status of the energy industry was today. Answers from the
panel indicated that the oil and gas industry was, for the
most part, in the late assessment phase and early
implementation phase. The electric utilities industry is in
the awareness and inventory stage, and for the most part not
yet into implementation. The panel felt that, overall, the
utilities industries are somewhat behind the oil and gas
industries in addressing Y2K issues.
Mr. Quiggins noted that the oil and gas industry has
identified Y2K as a "noncompetitive" issue and companies
that are otherwise competitors are working closely together
to solve their Year 2000 problems. Through a working group,
these companies share information and trade stories.
Telling senior management what their competitors are doing
is very helpful in convincing them to take action, and
everyone in the working group gains by their willingness to
share this kind of information with each other.
A question from the audience asked how much plant testing
would realistically be performed. The panel indicated that
testing in this area is a very difficult and serious problem.
Devices that are safety or operations critical will be tested.
They look at their systems from the perspective of safety,
revenue contribution, contractual obligations,
environmental/regulatory requirements, and legal
repercussions in order to prioritize their efforts.
A question from the audience asked what the various
professional organizations are doing in this area. The
panelists mentioned that the Institution of Electrical
Engineers (IEE) in the U.K. has a web site that is a great
resource for addressing embedded systems.
(See iee.org.uk. They also mentioned
high level articles in recent months from other professional
societies:
Chemical Engineering, July 1997
Year 2000 or Bust
che.com
Mechanical Engineering Magazine, September 1997
Millennial mayhem for manufacturing: Good morning, it's Jan. 1, 2000.
Will factories function today?
memagazine.org
Manufacturing Systems, September 1997
Year 2000 Special Report
manufacturingsystems.com
Several questions were asked about how best to work with
vendors to understand their compliancy status.
Most compliancy information that is available on the web
addresses IT, not embedded systems. Two plant tool
providers, Millennium UK and Tava Technologies have a Y2K
methodology built into their tools and are building vendor
compliancy databases to assist their clients.
A member of the panel suggested that it is helpful to
establish a private web site (intranet or extranet) for your
program office to give wide access to the equipment and
vendor database you collect.
It was noted that PLC vendors seem to be very forthright
about their Year 2000 compliancy problems, but Distributed
Control System (DCS) vendors are not talking about their
compliancy status, which is a big problem.
It was noted that when a vendor won't provide adequate
answers to their compliancy status or detail what the costs
will be to fix their equipment, it can be helpful to band
together with others within your industry and trade groups to
demand a response. Don't hesitate to take the issue up with
your CEO and have them get involved if that is what it takes
to get a response. It also helps to require that vendors
that want to provide bids on ongoing services also provide
compliancy information on equipment that they have supplied
in the past. Vendor compliance letters also help you
establish your legal standing and demonstrate due diligence
on the part of your organization.
Finally, it was noted that this is not just an automation
issue -- many functions in a plant involve human operators
which may need training to deal with changes in their
displays and interfaces.
End of part 1 of the SPG Dallas Year 2000 conference coverage. |
