HEADLINE: COUNTDOWN TO THE MILLENNIUM TIMEBOMB
From Printing World, November 3, 1997
"The fuse is lit on the millennium timebomb. For those who settle back and think their Apple Mac systems are immune, be warned. Anything that uses embedded chips - security alarms, car fuel-injection systems, even traffic lights - are all at risk. GARETH WARD reports.
In the US there are very real fears that the Internal Revenue Service, the US income tax office, will fail. Far from being greeted with universal celebration, the threat is met by gloom from those who point out that if the US government cannot collect taxes, it will not be able to raise money through lending. In short, the system will collapse. And all because the date has clicked over from December 31, 1999, to January 1, 2000.
This is the millennium bug at its most extreme, the result of the Western world's dual reliance upon computers and insistence that the cheapest technology will win. That cheap technology uses chips that have two numerals to record the date. In other words when the calendar moves from 1999 to 2000, the chips will simply cease to function.
Of course, you can ignore the Doomsday merchants and pretend that your company is not going to be affected. After all, you run an Apple Mac, which will continue running for the rest of its natural life, have Unix running your server and that is OK until part way through the next century - in any case your MIS supplier and press supplier have assured you that their equipment is perfectly all right. What is there to worry about? You are supremely confident, believe that ignorance is bliss or an inveterate gambler.
There are microchips in so many places, that run so much of what we take from granted that were any significant percentage of these to fail, companies across the country will be in deep trouble. That's the message emanating from those that know about these things. "It's a matter of company survival," says Robin Guenier, executive director of Taskforce 2000. He, of course, can be seen as either a Cassandra, issuing warnings that nobody believes and in any case are unlikely to be borne out, or as a Merlin uttering words that make absolute sense.
It's your choice and until January 1, 2000, you will not know for sure which is correct. Of course if his warnings are right, it will then be too late to act.
It's almost too late already, certainly for larger companies. The finance sector was the first to realise that there was a problem, hence the reluctance to issue credit cards expiring in the next century. It has also been the first to put it right having announced that all the recorders that accept credit card transactions will work beyond the end of this century.
For Mr Guenier: "If a company hasn't started yet, it's too late to adopt the best practice to sort matters. It's a question of damage limitation."
The starting point for most companies is to ensure that their payroll, invoicing and stock control systems will work. Legacy systems, which hold records over many years are at particular risk since most will be held on ageing databases and perhaps accessed via the older PCs which seemed to be doom.
Most companies will have addressed this problem or at the very least recognise it to be a potential problem. However, it is not an issue confined to mainframe computing. Newer computer networks based on client-server computing and the latest NT Pentium platforms are not automatically immune and need checking.
Where companies may not have done much work is with outside suppliers or their customers. Major print buyers, the likes of Marks & Spencer, have asked their suppliers for reassurance that they are compliant with Year 2000, but may not yet have carried out an audit. How about those companies from which printers buy paper or ink from, or the computerised parts storage systems that press manufacturers boast about. If these companies cannot deliver products because their computer systems have failed, the effect will be just as devastating as if the company itself were suffering. Equally of course, a print buyer is reliant on his print supplier being able to operate after January 1. Industry trends towards shorter run printing and just in time delivery will magnify the impact of any failure.
However, the biggest threat identified so far is from the failure of embedded controllers. The number of chips embedded into everyday objects outnumbers the number of chips used in desktop computers by 100:1. There will be chips in phone systems, heating systems, video recorders, air traffic controlsystems, nuclear powerstations, fuel injection systems for cars, security systems, microwave ovens and so on and so forth. It is these chips that are bought in bulk from the cheapest supplier that are both hard to identify and liable to fail. The printer that has rigorously checked that its accounts, prepress and ink register system on press are compliant, may find that it cannot open its front door the day after the millennium. The task is clearly mountainous. "Those companies that started two years ago are afraid they won't finish. Things will fail and some will go wrong, it's a matter of damage limitation. Some businesses are going to close," Mr Guenier repeats.
The embedded processors are produced in their millions for a matter of pence. The manufacturer then activates the circuitry which is necessary for his final product. Most at risk are those applications where one of these embedded chips is used to control a clock where two figures are used to identify the date resulting in a return to zero after the midnight hour.
The problem with embedded controllers has been recognised fairly recently. Keith Ireland of consultancy group Millennium 2000 acknowledges this. IT departments in large organisations have by and large come to grips with the problem as it relates to them. There is now a shift of awareness to the problems of the embedded systems. In most cases these processors are outside the remit of the IT department and usually managed by those who look after property or fixtures and fittings. As the realisation that there are hundreds of checks to be made in this area as well, it is little wonder that there is a rapidly developing skills shortage in omputing. There are already legendary tales about companies placing golden handcuffs around computing staff to ensure they are not abandoned for the first
attractive offer that comes along.
Many companies, says Mike Ellis of SAP, are using the problem not only to ditch antiquated computer systems but also to "re-engineer the company". Companies he says, have found that their software supplier may provide the reassurance that the application will continue operating, but this does not guarantee that the hardware will carry on. "Who," says Mr Ellis, "takes responsibility for the entire stack?"
He says there are various stages that an organisation will go through on this when confronted by the problem: first comes annoyance, then an attitude of "it's not my problem", followed by wishful thinking and then a stage of resentfulness - a "why me?" response. Then comes the stage of unreal horizons, typified with "I can deal with it", swiftly followed by the realisation that "It's bigger than I thought" and finally the acceptance sinks in that this is really a very large problem indeed.Jackie Oliver heads the millennium team at CAP Gemini, a consultancy that is being stretched by the phenomenon. She identifies two crucial factors for Year 2000. First is the reliance of industry on embedded chips. "This is a significant problem in process oriented organisations," she says. Second is the issue of a failure in the supplier chain. "One customer we deal with has 28,000 suppliers, varying from huge organisations to the smallest, and many are suddenly realising the importance of Year 2000 to their business," she says.
The issue is too important to be left to memo driven management. The matter of compliance needs to be driven from the top. "Companies that don't have a clear strategy that has board level approval, had better get it quickly," she warns.
In those terms it is believed that only 15% of the companies classified as SME's in this country have progressed beyond the first step. According to surveys, fewer than 10% believe that the problem applies to them. There is no reason to suppose the printing industry is any different.
What is clear is that companies need to carry out a complete inventory of where they are reliant on microchips. Winding the clocks forward to 11.55pm on December 31, 1999 will not necessarily help because the chances are that when the clock is returned to normal it will refuse to work because copyrightlicences have been infringed, that is supposing it operated correctly after the midnight hour in the first place.
In one instance a company discovered that it could not re-enter its system because it had developed a method of protection involving a change of password for every user every 90 days.
Once the inventory of all chips has been drawn up, a priority action list can follow and the checking and replacement procedure can begin. Internal checking is not enough, suppliers of all kinds need to be assessed, as should customers and payment systems.
Of course the impact of Y2K may be exaggerated, it may be just an excuse for the IT industry to find work for itself and for consultants to grow fat on the fears that have successfully spread.
On the other hand, the fears may be justified. The choice is yours.
Millennium scenarios
* IBM PCs built before 1996 will not operate because the Basic Input/Output
System (BIOS) is not compliant* IBM estimates it will have to modify 50 million lines of code, costing it $20m to make software look the same on January 1, 2000 as it did a day earlier.
* Year 2000 is also a leap year (not all century years are leap years) and not all software recognises this. Lotus and Lotus compatible worksheet software seems to fall into this category.
* Some operating systems will default to their creation year, ie Win 3.1 to 1990 and 1980 for MS-DOS.
* The Gartner Group, an IT research group, has estimated the world-wide cost of correcting the problem at between $300bn and $600bn. "It's very much like the captain of the Titanic arguing with the orchestra about which would be a fitting
waltz to play, as the ship hits the iceberg"
* Do not attempt to wind the clock forward with workstations on a network, with beta software applications or licensed limited software. Software licences may also forbid a copy being taken with the intention of testing the problem
* Worst case scenario: The Inland Revenue's equivalent in the US, the IRS will not have its computer system in shape in time. The US government will therefore not be able to collect the revenues to pay out on maturing bonds,making it impossible to sell new fund raising documents. While some banks may have their house in order, many other banks, interlinked on a global scale, will be far from ready hampering the transfer of funds and causing investors to withdraw their money until the problem is sorted out."
Sorry -- I don't have a link since I didn't get this over the Internet. |
