General y2k article, just skip over if you don't want to read
ComputerWorld
January 26, 1998
Julia King and Thomas Hoffman
Reality is bearing down hard on companies that had planned to replace rather than fix software applications before 2000.
They are already out of time. As a result, Plan B is in effect at companies such as $14 billion AlliedSignal, Inc.
The Morristown, N.J.-based manufacturer this year will re-direct the lion's share of its information systems budget to fixing legacy systems while it slows down spending on an ongoing $50 million-plus SAP AG R/3 project, Computerworld has learned.
''It's too late to fix the entire company with SAP,'' said Robert Scott, vice president of AlliedSignal's SAP Center of Excellence, in Morristown. There simply isn't enough time between now and the end of 1999 to implement the software, much less analyze and possibly revise thousands of processes across the company's automotive, aerospace and materials businesses.
Instead, AlliedSignal will spend millions fixing systems it knows it will scrap once the bulk of its R/3 project is completed sometime after 2002.
''The number of systems we'll fix for year 2000 and then throw away is probably 6% or 7% of the whole portfolio,'' Scott said.
''There were somewhat draconian budget cuts in the IS outlook. The cuts that have been made are related to slowing down ERP [enterprise resource planning],'' another Allied-Signal IS executive said. ''It's a relief to me not to have to push forward on ERP until after year 2000 is behind us.''
AlliedSignal isnt alone.
Some companies that embarked on package replacement strategies as early as 1995''aren't going to make it,'' said Stephanie Moore, an analyst at Giga Information Group, in Westport, Conn.
ALTERNATIVE PLAN
Meta Group, Inc., in Stamford, Conn., estimates that up to two-thirds of its clients had planned to replace rather than fix their software for 2000.
But now that they are facing an immovable deadline that is 23 months away, more of those companies are scaling back those packaged software projects to instead fix legacy systems.
One reason for the back-tracking is the time it is taking many companies to implement enterprise systems.
Companies must often restructure whole business processes, frequently in the face of user opposition, to work with the software.
''This is definitely a back-pedaling kind of thing,'' said Dan Sholler, an analyst at Meta Group. ''No one is jumping up and down about the fact that they have to do this stuff, because part of the project is throwaway work. They know they're fixing systems that will get thrown away six months after they're fixed.''
Some companies are taking a ''belt and suspenders'' approach, pursuing Plans A and B.
Hussman Corp. in St. Louis,a $1.2 billion manufacturer of refrigeration cases, is ''moving full steam ahead'' on year 2000 fixes and on implementing The Baan Co.'s enterprise software.
''We realized we couldn't rely on a [timely] implementation of an enterprise system because of the complexity,'' said Jim Fesler, technical director of the Baan project, which began last March.
''It's like buying an insurance policy,'' Fesler said of Hussman's year 2000 fix work. ''It's costly, but we want to make sure we're covered on both fronts.'
Any company that tries to replace legacy systems with enterprise software ''had better try to replace them with a vanilla system no modifications,'' said Peter de Jager, a year 2000 consultant, in Brampton, Ontario.
He said SAP has had many successes with smaller companies that have used its Accelerated SAP implementation program to install three or four R/3 modules in as little as four months.
AlliedSignal announced in April that it had taken five months to implement a single R/3 module across five of its automotive units in Europe.
AlliedSignal also has under way two other SAP projects that span three of its 11 business units and 41 of its more than 190 plants.
''These are projects where we could address year 2000 and significantly improve the performance of the business units,'' Scott said. SAP will later be deployed to the rest of the business units, but for now, legacy system fixes are in the works.
''The problem is we have 192 plants, and some have leaky roofs,'' Scott said.
''In some cases, we're going to fix the roof and close the plant down in three years. In other cases, we're fixing the roof, and we'll be able to operate the plant for years to come.''
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