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Technology Stocks : Year 2000 (Y2K) Embedded Systems & Infrastructure Problem -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Mansfield who wrote (495)	7/7/1998 2:14:00 AM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 618

'Year 2000 Scoreboard Power outage? What's the possibility that you or your business may wake up on the morning of Jan. 1, 2000, without juice -- the electrical kind? That's a major concern among businesses and a new U.S. Senate panel that's monitoring the year 2000 problem. The entire economy depends on the electric power industry, but the industry's year 2000 record today is "spotty," says Rick Cowles, a former information systems professional in that industry and author of the recently released Electric Utilities and Y2K. "There's some very good work going on ... at some companies, and there's none going on at others," Cowles says. Cowles sees progress among the roughly 200 investor-owned organizations that provide about 75% of the nation's electric power. "They're making progress and are heading off in the right direction," he says. The bad news lies in the hundreds of smaller companies that provide the remaining 25% of the nation's electric power, such as rural electric cooperatives and municipal utilities. Those organizations, Cowles says, are "behind the curve." They are constrained by finances and a lack of personnel to examine their year 2000 problems, he says. Yet, it's those smaller companies that will pose bigger problems come Jan. 1, 2000, he says. Because they buy their power off a power distribution grid, a year 2000 problem in any one of their systems could filter back through the supply chain and cause a regional interruption in power flow, Cowles says. He advocates the sharing of information among utility companies and believes Washington should help facilitate that. In Washington, the Senate's special committee on the year 2000 released the results of a recent survey of the nation's 10 largest utility corporations (oil, gas and electricity) and concluded that their efforts are "too slow," prompting "significant cause for concern." ... www2.computerworld.com

To: John Mansfield who wrote (495)	7/7/1998 2:16:00 AM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 618

'Utilities, primary sector lagging behind on millennium bug OTTAWA (CP) -- Providers of essential services such as electricity, oil, gas and water supplies are lagging behind every other sector in resolving their year 2000 computer problems, Statistics Canada reported Monday. ... canoe.ca