Semi-Equips - Buy when BLOOD is running in the streets! Message Board

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Technology Stocks : Semi-Equips - Buy when BLOOD is running in the streets!

LRCX 155.15

+2.1%

Nov 26 3:59 PM EST

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To: Silk Stockings who wrote (2794)	10/19/1997 6:16:00 PM
From: Ian@SI	of 10921

S.S., <begin Short answer:> Y2K is more hype by consulting firms who stand to benefit from the resulting fear than a real threat to the global economy. <end short answer> <START LONG ANSWER:> Computing systems may fail to produce correct results when dates from 2 different millenia are compared. e.g. For a program which calculated interest owing on a 30 year bond, the problem would have been fixed by 1971. In fact most calculations deal with dates spanning fairly long periods of time. Any 3 year or more forecasts would have already caused any problems they were going to and their programs corrected. etc. etc. In my opinion, most programs which are vital to a company that were going to fail will have failed before the middle of next year. The consultants know this, but they have proliferated the myth that the deadline is Jan 1, 2000. Why let people know that they really have 2 years less to transfer wealth over to the consulting organizations? Many companies still run business systems that serve no currently valid business purpose. It takes effort to stop a process. Typically, no one is responsible to determine that programs are unneeded or to get rid of them once that is determined. Incremental cost of running another program is nil. Incremental cost of getting rid of the program is greater than nil. These obsolete programs are also included in the consultants' estimates. Guess what most companies will do when faced with the choice of spending $$$ to fix something that no one wants, uses needs or will pay to have fixed. Oops, you're right, they'll probably pay up just in case. ;-) Further, very few of the business systems within a company's inventory are vital to the business. These are the ones that have probably been resystemized most recently and are most likely to correctly process dates from different millenia. Have there been Y2K problems? Most definitely. Will there be more? Most definitely. Does it really matter in the scheme of things? Not really. Corporations spend between 30 and 70% of their total IT manpower doing maintenance. A larger portion of that system maintenance expenditure will be devoted to fixing millenia related glitches. for the most part, just business as usual. A few proactive companies will prevent the problems thus saving the costs of fixing the messes caused by just waiting for the failures to occur. IMO, it's just like any other quality issue. It costs a company much more to deliver low quality products than to just do it right the first time. If I ever have a point of view on this, I'll be sure to let you know. <end long answer>

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