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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (18508)	5/31/1998 11:41:00 AM
From: Barbara Barry	Respond to of 50167

IQ, I have enjoyed reading this thread for quite a while and appreciate your posts.Until now,there has not been anything I could add.But you touched on an area I used to do a lot of research.The true costs of the y2k issue are the most illusive I have ever come across.Some examples might best serve my point. Last year I interviewed with the President of a systems integration company.They should be going public this year and do about 350m in revenues.I asked him if he felt there might be any impact on his business due to this issue and his clients IT budgeting.He quickly said no,that they would get the money somewhere else.I got the feeling he did not think the dollar amount would be that substantial.Dealing with the large banks and corporations as they do I found his assumptions might be flawed.He felt they could not afford NOT to keep up with technology while trying to keep up their networks and computer needs. When I looked into y2k companies one common problem is that some of their clients would not let them make press releases about what was going on.The reasons were obvious.They did not want to alert their competition,upset shareholders,worry clients etc.Not all companies have been as open as Bank of Boston regarding this issue. One y2k company was bashing some companies saying their fix was a joke. When I asked the executive vice president of a large bank about the y2k problem he said that it wasn't his area and he didn't know what the status was. A cfo I spoke with at a technology company wasn't concerned at all and felt "someone" would fix it in time.(the most common denial) I am not currently invested in any y2k companies since this issue runs the full scale from inflated hype to complete denial. The above illustrates just some of the issues I have personally come across and why I believe we won't know exactly how to calculate the financial impact until the crisis has passed.And I didn't even touch on the litigation ramifications going forward.One of the suits recently was against cmnd,but I don't recall the details. Just wanted to share my 2cents. Regards, Barbara

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (18508)	5/31/1998 2:28:00 PM
From: bob oserin	Respond to of 50167

I've just finished reading Barbara Barry's post. As I cannot qualify as an "expert" I think I would best serve you by reference to P/C Week: Y2K costs still underestimated, in its 6/1/98 edition. On-line it is: zdet.com The Gartner Group originally estimated cost @ $600bln. Current world-wide estimates are as high as $1.3trln. I remember how their first figures were laughed at. I humbly suggest you use a Y2K search to pull up all the info you would ever need. BOB O