Here is an article that was in the Investors Business Daily today 1/6/97
Year 2000 Bug Brings Search For
Hardware
Date: 1/6/98
Author: Matt Krantz
When Chase Manhattan Corp. did an inventory of its
computers recently, it got a big surprise.
Vital functions at the New York-based banking giant were
running on computers that no one - not even their information
technology department -knew existed. Banks of servers,
computers that manage office tasks such as printing and
sharing files, went unnoticed for years.
''There were circa-1988 PCs out there that people (use every
day) but forget that they exist,'' said Ian Macfadyen, the bank's
senior vice president. ''Servers easily become forgotten pieces
of architecture.''
Why did Chase Manhattan care to look in the first place? The
bank faces a strict deadline to update its systems as the new
millennium approaches. And if a company of Chase
Manhattan's stature can't keep track of its computers, who
knows how many other companies out there are
PC-inventory- challenged?
For Chase Manhattan to meet federal requirements, all
systems must be ''Year 2000 Compliant'' by the end of '98.
That means they must find forgotten computers and fix them
before then.
The much- publicized Year 2000 glitch is mainly a problem
with older mainframe systems. Computers with the problem
use only the last two digits, meaning the year 2000 is confused
with 1900.
But it's not just a problem with older systems. Even personal
computers running programs written in modern languages can
have Year 2000 problems, Macfadyen says. Since some PCs
often are fed data from mainframes, that could mean garbage
in, garbage out.
Before Chase can fix the problem systems, it needs to know
what hardware and software is in the field. Previously, the firm
had people walk around the offices with a clipboard, writing
down what equipment was where, a tedious process.
So the company in September installed software called Asset
Insight made by Cary, N.C.-based Tangram Enterprise
Solutions Inc. The software automatically probed the network,
looking for and counting PCs, printers and servers.
The software also can inspect a PC, see how much memory it
has, what programs are loaded on it, and who uses it. All is
done behind the scenes, without disturbing workers.
Most importantly for Chase Manhattan, the software identifies
PCs or servers most likely to have a Year 2000 problem. It
looks for equipment that has combinations of software and
hardware known to cause problems.
Chase only included 2,000 PCs in its initial sample, but the
program soon will be expanded to inspect all of the firm's
15,000 PCs. It's a complicated task, since the bank has many
flavors of systems.
Chase won't disclose how much the project will cost. But the
software, when bought directly from Tangram, costs about
$40 per desktop. That means Chase spent roughly $600,000
for all 15,000 of its desktops. The software costs $40 to $80
when bought from systems integrators, says a Tangram
spokeswoman.
The Tangram product has many competitors. One of the most
popular is TME 10, made by Tivoli Systems Inc., a unit of
IBM Corp.
The biggest challenge for Chase Manhattan is figuring out what
to do with all the data Asset Insight collects, says Macfadyen.
A two-person team has been created to study the inventory
full time. They will put together an action plan, prioritizing the
systems that need to be fixed.
''We've never really had this kind of data before,'' he said.
''We need to figure out how to make best use of it.'' |
