Just to add a little refinement to your answer (which has a lot of good points):
I've been working at a startup which produces software to convert old COBOL programs to run correctly after the Crack of Doom (tm). before this I would never have thought that as many major corps. and gov't agencies rely as heavily on patched-together collections of crufty old COBOL as actually do -- while there'll be lots of little problems with Y2K issues, the real problems center around the dinosaur organizations with vast COBOL and PL/1 accounting, inventory management, factory scheduling, etc., systems which are absolutely critical to running their businesses and which no one in their organization really understands. While some of the pieces may (it will be discovered) fail and have no negative effects, much of what fails encodes 30 years of business process work and will leave some of the organizations involved dead in the water.
Unfortunately this problem does not fit into the normal mentality of such organizations. Each individual in the org finds it more convenient to ignore the problem, and until the day arrives, no one takes responsibility for it and pursues a real solution. Thus I expect something like 50% of large corps and gov't agencies to suffer a serious failure which comes close to shutting them down, or at the very least causes a mad scramble for interim solutions and patchwork upgrades which should do wonders for companies like CA but will take several years of profits from their bottom lines.
I think it's entirely possible the Y2K disaster will abort world economic growth for a year or two.
All of that aside, most of the companies in the market which are sold as "story stocks" solving Y2K problems are hype bubbles, and even the good ones, it appears, will not see huge business until 2000 because of the nature of these organizations to ignore the problem until systems stop and layoffs begin. Those who have taken the hit in the last few years and upgraded their systems properly will have a huge advantage, and other managements will be dumped for failing to fix their problems in time.
Ob Semi Equips: By that time the equips will have seen massive upgrade demand, and demand for new hardware should increase dramatically as many companies upgrade their systems to more advanced platforms to run Oracle and other more advanced (than COBOL/VSAM/etc.) business systems. I think, aside from the recession we're likely to see, Y2K problems will increase demand for machines and semis. |
