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

To: Greg M. who wrote (10890)

4/9/1998 4:00:00 PM

From: Colin Christie

Respond to of 13949

From the 'you must be kidding' department:
Story at zdnet.com

[IMAGE] A Y2K Strategy Called Surrender

By Mark Mehler

[IMAGE]Rather than debug their systems, some Fortune 2,000 companies
have decided to stand at ground zero when the Y2K time bomb detonates.

Can't remediate on time? Think bypassing the Year 2000 problem with an
ERP solution is a pipe dream? How's this for a plan of action? Drop
back 15 yards and punt.

A growing number of Fortune 2,000 companies are giving up on the
prospect of renovating or dumping their legacy software over the next
21 months, and instead are bracing for the worst by formulating
"contingency plans" for a new era of non-compliance.

Enough major clients are throwing in the towel, says John Lucke,
director of marketing at Technology & Business Integrators, that the
consultancy has added a new contingency planning discipline.

NetSuite Development Corp. is courting VARs to resell its line of
networking tools, which includes a product that documents Year 2000
compliance problems in found network gear.

The company's NetSuite offering includes network design, auditing and
Year 2000 compliance tools. VARs can buy a NetSuite Reseller
Information Kit, which includes a for-resale unit of the company's
software and a second unit for demonstration purposes. The kit is
priced at $8,000, but with a 40 percent reseller discount it costs
$4,800.

NetSuite's VAR program also has VAR training at the company's Boston
office and joint sales-call opportunities.

David Warshay, channel sales manager at NetSuite, says the Year 2000
tool has become a "must-have" product. To back up that claim, he cites
market research that indicates 93 percent of the networks installed
before 1996 are non-compliant.

NetSuite is aiming at a limited number of resellers within areas in
North and South America. And within regions, the company plans to
limit competition among NetSuite resellers by making sure they target
different vertical markets.

For more information on the program, contact dwarshay@netsuite.com.
"There just aren't enough resources to get the job done in time," he
says. "And, at this point, nobody knows how severe [the crisis] will
be . so we're focusing more on helping clients anticipate the outcome
and take the necessary precautions, without having to spend a lot of
money."

A solid contingency plan, adds Lucke, ought to include the following
elements:

[IMAGE] Complete documentation of all assessment, conversion and
testing efforts, as well as a rudimentary "prudent man" defense
against the inevitable wave of shareholder lawsuits (see "Are You At
Risk?");

[IMAGE] A full risk analysis that will tell you which systems and
applications pose the greatest Y2K threat and should be remediated
first;

[IMAGE] "Program encapsulation" services that deduct a couple of
decades off the date data, effectively buying time for the tardy;

[IMAGE] Interim approaches such as windowing, data expansion to hook
your Y2K- compliant applications to thousands of non-compliant
supplier and customer systems.

Of course, all this is not to say that the white flags are
predominant.

Danny Meeks, a pre-sales technician a CTS Inc. a Roswell, Ga.-based
integrator, says you can get dizzy counting the number of Y2K
renovation specialists hanging their shingles.