VERRRRY Interesting! DC Y2K meeting report - Cory, David Eddy, others
' Competition will kick in and the members will want to
look as good as possible.': lots of y2k engagements announcements to be expected as a consequence the coming months!
John
_____________
'Hi Dad,
We had a good time at the WDCY2K meeting last night. We met Cory Hamasaki.
Cory's presentation was very much toned down compared to his comments that
I've read on the web.
The panelists at the meeting were David Eddy, Cory, Alan Simpson of
comlinks.com, and Lyn Kelly -NASD Year 2000 Program Director of the
National Association of Securities Dealers. Here's a brief synopsis of
their comments:
David Eddy:
The Good, the Bad and the Possible (about Small/Medium Enterprises).
The Good
More nimble
More standard packages in use
Can rapidly replace Y2K-ok packages
Fewer decision makers
Smaller entrenched fiefdoms
Easier to move through the stages (awareness, denial, acceptance)
Possible to hibernate on Y2K day.
The Bad
Far more of them
Difficult to reach
Very low awareness
Not hearing about Y2K from their trusted sources (like CPA's, industry
organizations, etc.)
Lack of resources
Thin IT/systems thinking skills
Much obsolete hardware/software
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Misconception that Y2K is only a mainframe/big iron issue
Likely to be stuck with custom applications
Existing labor pool will be recruited away from them
The Possible
War mobilization mentality ASAP
Begin (as always) with awareness 101
SBA must push awareness to SMEs
Sell Y2K door-to-door like war bonds
Vendors (hardware/software, local consultantcies and trainers) to offer
all-in-one bundles
A technical/project management skills training effort to form small tams of
low-cost labor (remember, this isn't rocket science) - clone/franchise at
the local level.
Lyn Kelly:
NASD Year 2000 Program
Self-regulatory organization for the securities industry
Members include Merrill Lynch all the way down to one-man firms
Small business is 81% of membership
38% responded to Y2K program survey (have since threatened fines and public
exposure of responses/lack of responses)
61% of small businesses say they have no problem
35% of the 1700 respondees have no Y2K plan or think that Y2K is not
applicable to them
This is after 142 communications published to members
50% said their plan did not include analysis of their technical systems
51% said their plan did not include analysis of 3rd party software or
hardware or analysis of internal systems.
61% said their plan did not cover facilities (including power, buildings,
etc.) or telecommunications facilities.
56% said corrective actions would be needed but not sure what.
58% did not respond with their plans for remediation, system verification
and testing schedules.
Cory Hamasaki:
He just explained what he has done and what he plans to do over the next 18
months to get his small family business ready for Y2K. He said that it is
pretty simple, but it will probably take a total of 1 full-time week of
effort (time that he doesn't have) and about $4000 (4-5% of business's
annual revenue) to get ready. He said that like so many other small
businesses, his family's business is inches away from going under at any
moment and Y2K is another added strain. Cory had a good example of the
type of testing that is necessary for small businesses in the company cash
register (a Casio). He said that he followed the Y2K testing instructions
(I didn't catch if the instructions were from Casio or somewhere else).
Had to put the register in a maintenance mode by flipping a switch). He
inadvertently or otherwise ran a transaction on the register while in
maintenance mode which locked up the register cold. After many attempts to
reboot through power cycling etc., found three batteries buried deep inside
that when removed and left out for a few minutes, cleared the problem. The
small business advocates in the audience seemed to appreciate Cory's real
world examples of what might need to be done and clamored for more
examples/checklists. Cory had a list of equipment that he checked (fax
machine, Verifone credit card terminal, etc.) and the results. He has not
yet begun the back office work (PCs etc.) that will need to be done.
Alan Simpson
Alan was very entertaining. He started with the thought that the Senate
hall decor reminded him somewhat of a ball room on the Titanic and this
meeting was like a seminar on "iceberg avoidance".
Telecom switches are beginning to be a frightening problem
Very small businesses will be OK, they can use index card systems if all
else fails.
Medium businesses are biggest risk
Is getting 4-5 whistleblowers a week from utilities (telephone, gas,
sewage, electric) giving him frightening insight into problems (especially
the embedded systems problem)
Megaproblems to hit down the road
Significant numbers of top management still say Y2K problem is a hoax and a
way for Y2K consultants to get rich
Dow will plummet 6000 points
23 year old kids on Wall street who graduated 5 minutes ago and received
their MBA 3 minutes ago and who are now getting billions of dollars of 401K
money a week to invest don't know failure and think that failure is not
possible
Baby boomers move as a group. Once one turns, they will all turn and it
will be a panic
The printing presses will not be able to print money fast enough to keep up
with demand once the runs on the banks start
Joe Public is confused. There are credible software people saying that Y2K
is a hoax.
No leadership from OMB/White house. Do not need another retired nobody to
lead Y2K effort - need no less than Al Gore or Colin Powell.
Five stages of Y2K are: Awareness, Panic, <I'm missing one here>, triage,
litigation.
There was a question/answer session after the presentation. Some points
that came out were:
Banking regulators are going to force banks to get assurance that company
is Y2K ready before loaning new money in the near future.
Rick Cowles will testify to congress in a few weeks about electric
utilities.
Lyn said that you don't want to test your Y2K fixes on active networks
because you can bring down production systems with big headaches on how to
back out erroneous transactions.
Need specific examples of what the 38% of NASD survey responders were doing
Would like published list of compliant/non-compliant hardware/software.
Everyone seemed to agree that this was not possible because of the lawyers.
Could the NASD shut down non-compliant members? Lyn said that what they
were doing was telling members that their survey responses will be posted
(web site, etc.). Competition will kick in and the members will want to
look as good as possible.
That's all for now,
Mike [Mike is my son who works for a major oil company in Fairfax, VA]
--
Harlan
_______
Path: news.worldonline.nl!newsgate.cistron.nl!het.net!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed.concentric.net!global-news-master
From: "Harlan Smith" <hwsmith.nowhere@cris.com>
Newsgroups: comp.software.year-2000
Subject: WDCY2K attended by Mike
Date: 22 Apr 1998 08:30:54 EDT
Organization: Paperless
Lines: 146
Message-ID: <01bd6df2$a5ac7d20$0e969bcf@CRC3.concentric.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: ts001d02.ftl-fl.concentric.net
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Internet News 4.70.1162
Xref: news.worldonline.nl comp.software.year-2000:36351
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael H. Smith
Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 1998 6:52 AM
To: hwsmith.nowhere@cris.com
Subject: WDCY2K report |
