Mr. Forthright you need to become much more informed about Y2K. Believe me it is more than a whim and the whinning will turn to weeping and gnashing of teeth. GPW is more than "just" a Y2K company. There is good news coming down the line which will be extremely convincing to all. A taste of the following articles along with 100's of others on the net should convince anyone that this is a major economic issue. It is major in that it will cost governments, industry, institutions and the like an incredible price tag. And who will benefit. Y2K companies no doubt.
Here are some recent articles to spark your interest to search the net for more. Why not also ask your bank, insurance company, government agency what they are doing about it? You might be surprized in many ways.
ARTICLES ETC.
I have followed a thread quite faithfully this week. Once again I am reminded of the total failure for people to understand the implications of Y2K. Believe me, understanding the implications can greatly affect your approach to investing, to life style, and to the whole issue of economics. I am not paranoid nor do I encourage you go paranoid over this issue, however, we must become objective and realistic.
One good question to ask yourself is will all the services that you depend upon be available in December 1999 (or sooner!) and into the year 2000 be available to you. How will your life be affected? Should you not be wise in the choices you make as to who services your life? Is there more to the whole issue of Y2K that will greatly affect this world in the way it functions and presents itself to the average citizen? Good questions. Now --- just a few articles to help you broaden your awareness:
Y2K ripple effect
By Stephanie Neil, PC Week Online
April 13, 1998 7:12 AM PDT
With 99 percent of credit card compliance testing done, John McCarthy would appear to be one of those rare IT managers who can relax and breathe easy about year 2000 conversion. He can't.
McCarthy, vice president of the year 2000 project at Visa International, in Foster City, Calif., knows the company's Y2K project could still hit rough waters if key partners don't bring their millennium projects into port successfully.
Companies like IBM are beginning to release Y2K tools for companies that have fallen behind.
Microsoft is getting slammed for falling behind in its efforts to help combat Y2K.
Visa will finish testing 131 mainframe applications and 100 client/server programs by the end of the year. But that is not enough.
"Making our own systems year 2000-compliant is not going to solve the problem," McCarthy said. "We still have to anticipate some kind of failure in the supply chain and come up with a contingency plan. No one can expect to survive year 2000 unless they test major vendor connections and business partner interfaces."
Call it the Y2K ripple effect. As companies become more reliant on EDI (electronic data interchange), electronic commerce and other electronic transactions for dealing with key partners and suppliers, they're increasingly at risk if those partners botch their own Y2K projects. At best, companies such as Visa could find themselves dealing with transactions and data files containing corrupted date fields. At worst, they could find critical suppliers and partners shut down, unable to take orders, ship products or process transactions.
Consequently, many IT managers are casting a critical eye on the supply chain, examining their business partners' Y2K efforts. While many companies, so far, have done little more than mail letters asking partners where their Y2K efforts stand, others are getting more aggressive. Some are preparing to help partners that seem to be falling behind in the Y2K race. Others are developing contingency plans that cover the possibility of bigger Y2K-related partner problems.
BankBoston, for example, is ready to let vendors know it will sever a relationship if the supplier puts the bank at risk. "I think we would have to," said Steven McManus, communications manager for BankBoston's millennium project team, in Boston. "It is too much [of a] threat to the company if [a supplier] is not ready."
BankBoston isn't the only enterprise beginning to plan for the worst. In November, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance issued a cease-and-desist order against three Georgia banks owned by Putnam-Greene Financial Corp., in Eatonton, Ga. The order cited unreliable electronic information systems that could not process data correctly after Dec. 31, 1999. The banks will not have their doors locked, providing they renovate all relevant systems for Y2K compliance by the end of this year.
Because financial services companies are most reliant on electronic transactions between enterprises, they've been the first to recognize the Y2K ripple effect and to make contingency plans. Visa, for example, deals with 14,000 banks and processes 50 million electronic transactions a day originating from the 14 million merchant point-of-sale terminals. With such an enormous amount of EDI occurring, Visa can't guarantee that its network will remain unsullied, McCarthy conceded.
Concern about Y2K partner problems is spreading to other industries. Automobile manufacturers are realizing that the inability of a seat-belt-buckle supplier to provide its product could shut down production, said a spokesman for the Automotive Industry Action Group, in Southfield, Mich. As a result, the AIAG and other industry groups are helping suppliers and partners collaborate on Y2K efforts.
But many companies are just beginning to communicate with partners and evaluate their Y2K progress. For example, Heineken USA Inc., which has an IT staff of only four, has begun to evaluate the Y2K progress of its beer distributors. Heineken processes orders for its U.S. distributors through an EDI connection with the Heineken export company in Holland. Distributors communicate with Heineken USA through a Web site dubbed HOPS (Heineken Operations Planning System) that integrates with the back-end supply chain program based on software from Logility Inc.
"If a distributor went down and couldn't pick up beer from the port or deliver it, that would affect us," said Carol Schillat, information manager at Heineken USA, in White Plains, N.Y.
Fortunately for IT managers such as Schillat, ISVs are beginning to deliver tools that can help a company assess its Y2K ripple effect risk by testing business partner applications and data.
Packages such as Viasoft Inc.'s OnMark 2000 can flag two-digit date data filtering into the corporate LAN. A suite debuted last week from Thinking Tools Inc., of Monterey, Calif., specifically addresses the supply chain. Think 2000 2.0, priced from $30,000, maps interdependencies between business functions and external vendors. It outlines potential risks and simulates possible project plan scenarios. Tools from vendors such as Juxtacomm Technologies Inc. and IST Development Inc. can also be used to test date fields in files from external sources and, where necessary, transform them.
But IT managers should not stop at testing partner data. It's important to work with partners. "It's an issue of collaboration. In some cases, that means sitting side by side with your [supplier] and going hand in hand," said Tim Morton, vice president of operations at Electronic Data Systems Corp.'s CIO Services, in Plano, Texas.
MasterCard International Inc. did extensive field testing of vendors' point-of-sale machines at merchant sites. "We hired outside groups in key cities to run test cards in merchant terminals," said David Africk, senior vice president of business systems for MasterCard, in Purchase, N.Y. "And we built some sophisticated monitoring systems to look at known year 2000 accounts going through the systems." As a result, although 10 percent of the company's cards have expiration dates of "00," MasterCard is hearing few complaints, Africk said.
Most companies are approaching Y2K conversion in sequential waves of testing: first, central business applications; second, end-user applications; and third, a look at suppliers, said EDS' Morton. But time is running out on many businesses just starting their assessment phase inside their own company. That means they may never get to the point where they know what partners are doing, he said.
But ignorance of external Y2K risks could eventually sink a company. "Year 2000 will be a series of moderate-sized business interruptions--paper cuts, so to speak," said John Bace, an analyst at Gartner Group Inc., in Chicago. "But you get enough paper cuts, and soon you bleed to death."
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IF YOU CAN TRUST MICROSOFT'S PERFORMANCE IN THE PAST, THEN THE FOLLOWING PROMISES BY THE BIG COMPANY MAY NOT NECESSARILY HOLD TRUE! You can come to your own conclusions:
Microsoft releases Y2K product reviews
By Mary Jo Foley, Sm@rt Reseller
April 15, 1998 2:33 PM PDT
Of Microsoft Corp.'s 60 top application and system software products, 21 are only partially Year 2000-compliant, according to data Microsoft published today to its new Year 2000 Web page.
A chief reason for lack of total compliance of a number of these products is Internet Explorer 3.X and 4.X, said Microsoft officials. According to the Microsoft Year 2000 site, Service Pack 1 for IE 4, which is due to be posted to Microsoft's Web site in the next 60 days, will include fixes to the various Year 2000 issues plaguing the product.
Until that service pack is available, Microsoft recommends its customers use four-digit expiration dates for cookies or choose expiration dates other than 2000.
In addition to Internet Explorer, other products which are not 100 percent Year 2000-compliant include Windows 95, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, NT Server 4.0, NT Workstation 4.0, various versions of Office 95, Visual Basic 5.0 and Visual Studio Enterprise 5.0, according to Microsoft.
Another three Microsoft products - Access 2.0, Word for MS-DOS 5.0 and Office Professional 4.3 - are non-Year 2000-compliant, according to Microsoft.
On the Year 2000 Web site, Microsoft provides recommended steps to compliance for these and all of its partially compliant products. If a fix or service pack is required for compliance, Microsoft committed to providing it to customers for free.
Microsoft's Web site highlights a number of Microsoft Certified Solution Providers and other enterprise partners who are available to work on Year 2000 issues with customers. These include Amdahl Corp., Compaq Computer Corp., Digital Equipment Corp., Data General Corp., DMR Consulting Group Inc., NCR Corp. and Tandem Computers Inc.
Microsoft officials said that the "vast majority" of the company's products are either Year 2000-compliant or "compliant with minor issues." |
