"The Year 2000 Should Keep You Up At Night." Article from Bank Automation News. October 16, 1996. 1007 words.
(Selected paragraphs follow)
The year 2000 problem affects everything -- application logic, data, user interfaces and operating systems and it will be a costly problem to fix if you don't act now, bankers and analysts say.
The problem is so severe that the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, a government interagency group, issued an alert that examiners will review each institution's year 2000 plan.
"If you don't stay awake at night and worry about this, then you don't fully understand the problem," said Brian Robbins, vice president in charge of the year 2000 program office at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York. "Every day you let slip by, you're going to wish, you're going to beg, to get back at the end of this period."
Chase has dedicated about 60 full-time staffers to the project. Initial estimates are about $200 million, based on lines of code. The number of lines varies as the merger [I assume they mean Chase Manhattan-Chemical Bank] continues.
(The following paragraphs come from the subsection "The NationsBank Story.")
Risk resides in everything from the desktop personal computers (PC) to software that prints forms and checks with an automatic "19" stamped in the year column, Large [executive vp in charge of millenium conversion] says.
Every PC in the bank will have to reconfigured, otherwise it will revert back to the system's date inside the box, which is likely 1980, Large says.
NationsBank has dedicated about 45 full-time staffers to the conversion project, which it expects to cost between $50 million and $55 million. The bank is relying heavily on services from IBM's ISSC group for conversion consulting and outsourcing services, Large Adds.
Philip |
