It is high high for companies to get their act together says Peter De Jaeger... I shortened it down to get to the meat of the article.
interesting for all Y2K vendors.
Year 2000 Bankers Conference Editorial Coverage
American Banker and The Strategic Research Institute
presented this conference for Bankers dealing with the year
2000 problem. American Banker is the leading information
provider to the financial services industry and produces
the magazine American Banker and other publications for
financial institutions. The Strategic Research Institute
is a provider of conferences in the areas of finance,
health care, information technology, manufacturing, sales,
natural resources, and media/entertainment. American
Banker is at americanbanker.com and the
Strategic Institute is at srinstitute.com.
The conference organizers were expecting at least 150
attendees from banks and financial institutions around the
country. They actually had more. The attendees were a mix
of people from the industry. One of the organizers told me
that she was impressed that there was a good mix of people,
from CEOs and CIOs down to loan officers and support
staff. The most numerous group were members of the
legal profession, with about fifty lawyers in the audience.
There were five venders in attendance: Accler8
Technology Corporation, Arter and Hadden LLP
attorneys, McCabe Visual 2000 and Vendor Verification Inc.
------------ Opening Keynote by Peter de Jager
Peter de Jager gave the keynote address opening the
conference. He began by noting that Bill Gates had said two years
ago that Microsoft products didn't have any year 2000 problems
but that now he is admitting that Windows 95 and Windows NT
both have problems, and that Microsoft has opened a web site of
solutions (see microsoft.com. The web site,
following a hallowed tradition of almost all large IT projects, is late.
Peter describes programmers as the most optimistic people in the
world, who always believe that this next fix will be the last
necessary and everything will finally work. He reported that the
Denver airport has 100 non-compliant systems, including 40 that
are mission critical. He went on to report that only 5% of Japanese
companies are doing anything, and pointed out two reasons that
exacerbate the year 2000 problem over there. Total consensus is
usually needed to initiate any project and there is an extreme
hesitation when delivering bad news to management. Some
companies in this country have the same problem. Peter also
pointed out that most of Europe wasn't even scheduling Y2K
work until 1999.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Questions
A short question and answer period followed. One person
inquired about Peter's opinion of the state of the global economy
and Y2K. Peter replied that it was his opinion that a global
recession was unavoidable because we were still discussing the
issue instead of fixing it.
When asked what he was sharing with the rest of the world, Peter
answered that there was good news and bad news. The good news
is that the US leads the world in fixing the problem. The bad news
is that the US leads the world in fixing the problem and our present
level of compliance is nothing to brag about to anybody.
The last question was on contingency planning. Peter said that the
best practice for contingency planning is to have a contingency, a
plan B" for every single critical system including basic
infrastructure.
He ended by telling the participants of this conference, all from a
highly regulated part of the economy, that the regulators were on
the move and they wanted answers to their questions about banks'
year 2000 plans. He said they were telephoning now, but this would
soon be replaced by visits. "They will sit across from you and stare
and ask how you are coming along and they will watch your
response closely. What are you going to tell them?"
Peter ended by asking for anyone to send him some good news if
they had any. He said he didn't want to get the reputation of being
a gloom and doomer, but that he really had not received any
reassuring news yet.
Its Not Just an IT Problem Anymore
In November of last year I asked all the banks in the Portland,
Oregon area if they were asking their business customers about
their year 2000 exposure and efforts at fixing the problem. At that
time, only the Bank of America was asking its customers about
their year 2000 plans. All the loan officers I talked to told me they
thought IT was taking care of the problem and they didn't need to
get involved. Now they will be involved -- even though they are
only required to assess "substantial" customers. This should
have a quantum effect on raising of the consciousness of the
business community in the next few months.
The Gartner Group estimates 3% to 5% of US businesses will be
fatally impacted by the year 2000 problem. H. Rubin, the Hunter
College economist, estimates that 2 out of 3 large U.S. companies
did not have a plan to deal with Y2K as of December of 1997.
These numbers, and the Produce Palace lawsuit, prompted the
change in regulations. Some of the factors that will impact loans are:
declining demand for products that are seen as Y2K non-compliant
or potentially defective, delays in production or delivery of
products, and delays or mistakes in billings and payments from
customers.
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