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Bob:
The heavy-duty traders here may not be interested in too deep analysis of my position but here is the reader's digest version.
1. It is too late and too risky to replace ALL of the huge enterprise-class applications that run our business, government, and other organizations world-wide. Ergo, stabilization services and tools will be the prime solution for most organizations in the short-term (3-5 years). The track record of making large projects come in on schedule is abyssmal and nothing has been invented related to Year 2000 to change this reality.
2. Once re-investment in systems is complete, there will be very little incentive to throw them out until ROI can be acheived.
3. Consulting organizations are taking on Y2K projects as part of outsourcing deals. "Give us your Y2K and the next 15 years and we'll work something out on the price." This is guaranteed revenue stream.
4. Once the consultants take over the maintenance and outsourcing of core critical systems, they have a say as to what the future technology direction of the company is. Integration with these core systems will keep them involved in adding value to systems.
5. Consulting organizations have no sunk costs. They can control their costs by shedding unneeded resources at any time. If at the end of the stabilization period they are heavy on COBOL programmers, they will just fire them and retain system re-engineering specialists to mine out the valuable nuggets that are in these systems that have been running organizations for years. These re-engineering activities will evolve organizations in a risk-managed and planned way, rather than a reactionary, slash and burn approach because date related problems are looming. It is the pipeline of revenue that they live off of.
6. A "Legacy" system is any system that is running in production today. It is the basis upon which business is transacted. Newer systems have typically augmented some business function to make these legacy systems more responsive but haven't REPLACED them. We typically add more process, but shed little. Consequently, all of the new mission critical stuff sits on top of even MORE mission-critical stuff that is considered too inflexible to improve so it just limps along as the basis for every bell and whistle laid on top of it. When you peel back all of the fancy graphical user interfaces, web pages, and data warehouses, you are left with the base systems that actually move the money through organizations and really COUNT when you have to perform triage on what systems need saving. Just ask the Internal Revenue Service.
This went on longer than I intended. Thank you to all who endured this. I hope it has added some perspective about what is REALLY important in Year 2000 activities and that is:
1. Project Management
2. Interfaces between systems internally and externally
3. Relationship management with customers and suppliers. If they go down, they'll drag you with them. Witness the current GM strikes and the work stoppage it is causing.
I hope they don't kick me off for being too long-winded. Despite what the mondoman is proclaiming, this issue is real, it's big, and it has the potential to wreck any of your other investments, even the ones that aren't discussed on this thread. Beware the silver bullet! Thirty years of creativity in systems design and delivery will not be replaced by a single technology.
When is some serious discussion going to take place about the risk to ALL investments if the perceived 20% of business failures are only three years hence? Can anyone survive these kinds of cash-flow hits?
BC-out. |
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