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Technology Stocks : Y2K (Year 2000) Stocks: An Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sultan who wrote (10430)	3/26/1998 8:17:00 AM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13949

Sultan, ask your friend in a few weeks how things are going in trying to fix their code in-house. The industry expression is "pay me now or pay me later" (gg). I suspect that most large companies that have done in-house conversions started months if not years ago. It was also at that time that they paid the Y2K tool license fees, which is why such revenues are declining. Yes, of course outside vendors use tools. But, again, they licensed those tools a long time ago. Yes, many are paying a royalty to the tool vendor, but it seems the really big contracts are being awarded to Indian body shops and Y2K factories, as opposed to small local consulting companies using tools. - Jeff

To: Sultan who wrote (10430)	3/28/1998 10:41:00 AM
From: Hardware Heister	Respond to of 13949

A friend of mine, who is a PM for a y2k project says just the opposite. Since it is hard to get the outside resources and the rates are high, internal resources have been reassigned to his y2k project. Makes sense. Co. will postpone some stuff if they figure they can pull it off by themselves. Even where the stuff is outsourced, consulting firm is going to use some tools to get the job done. You are not suggesting that any one is going to try to analyze the code themselves, without any automated tools. Are you ? The reality of the situation is: 1.) In terms of volume of code, the vast majority of code does not involve dates. This varies based on industry and application, but overall, this statement is true. 2.) In terms of criticalness to valid program results (i.e. did it do what it is supposed to do?) date code becomes hugely important. 3.) As a profession, computer programmers have yet to figure out how to make a lot of changes without screwing a few things up. Therefore, automated tools are a godsend. So, basically, to use a weak analogy, we have to find the needle in the haystack, then thread the needle in a very limited time period. The things I see happening are: 1.) An enormous amount of work is being done in house by programmers & the work is very labor intensive, so almost everybody is hiring programmers. Consequently, the market price for programming labor has risen dramatically in the past year, leading to rising profits for anyone who can quickly bring in programmers at current market rates. This includes 'body shops' and head hunters, who appear to be really raking in the bucks. [Every head hunter I have talked to has just recently closed on a new house, I kid you not.] 2.) Tools are most useful for analysis, methodology related work, and testing. Remediation tools have their pitfalls & there are dramatic differences in the quality of tools. I personally would be very careful investing in a company touting a year 2000 tool without having direct knowledge of the tool, or at least knowing someone who can impart me with the same.