' Time is running out for Russia
by Nadia Damon
Russia has yet to start work on making its computer systems millennium compliant, despite having less than 10 months left until the final deadline.
This week, Russia's year 2000 competency centre announced an agreement with Lanit Holding, a business partner of US software transformation firm, Relativity Technologies, to use its RescueWare application for millennium work.
According to David Green, vice president for Europe of Relativity Technologies, Russian computer systems will not be as straightforward to work on as US and other European systems.
"The nature of the problem is different to that in the West," he comments. "In Russia, they have a mass of archaic computer languages and platforms that cannot be made year 2000 ready."
Green says the old systems are a legacy of the Soviet government, and cannot be altered in time - because some of the technology platforms may not be upgraded. Instead, Linat is working with Russia's year 2000 competency centre to provide year 2000 remediation and modernise old systems.
Relativity claims RescueWare will allow the Russians to transform legacy systems written in languages such as Clipper, which is not widely used in the West, to up-to-date ones such as C++ and Java.
It works by replicating the older language and transferring it on to a modern platform.
Although Green says Russia doesn't suffer from a shortage of computer skills, he claims it doesn't have the money to fund the work. "Russia has a major problem on its hands. At the moment it doesn't understand the scale of the problem."
Last month, US Air Force General, John Gordon, deputy director of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), told the US Senate that Russia appears particularly vulnerable, and raised concerns about the safety of Russia's missiles, nuclear plants and gas pipelines - one of which supplies Germany.
He said computer glitches following the date change could cause accidents if temperature or humidity monitors malfunction, or early warning missile systems to wrongly interpret foreign missile activity.
Gordon added that the Pentagon has been consulting with the Russians about how to avoid the potential dangers.
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