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Technology Stocks : Forecross Corporation : Y/2000 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ruyi who wrote (1440)	9/28/1998 10:41:00 PM
From: AD	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1654

Will Y2K Workers Keep On Working? Lenny Liebmann September 21, 1998 The Year 2000 remediation push may have forced companies to hire more outside help than the norm. But that doesn't mean the contractors' party will end when the champagne corks pop on Jan. 1, 2000. Instead, consultants who proved themselves on Y2K projects are likely to find work with the same clients for next-generation Web development. "There are a ton of projects that have been put on hold," says Stephanie Moore, an analyst at Giga Information Group who specializes in Y2K issues. "Contractors who have done a good job and haven't gouged their clients shouldn't have any problem getting more work from them." Many Y2K consulting groups view remediation projects as part of an overall strategy to engage clients on a more long-term basis. "We were already looking down the road back in 1994 when we started our Y2K practice," says Jim Woodward, senior vice president at the division of Cap Gemini America LLC responsible for Y2K services in the United States. "We knew there would be a sort of cliff coming when the work got done." But Woodward says that since his company offers a wide range of IT services, his division will be well-positioned to capitalize on pent-up demand for other needs-including electronic commerce. "My responsibilities include our e-commerce, data warehousing, and electronic bill presentation and payment practices, so Y2K work is part of a much broader offering we bring to the table," he says. Lots More Work To Do Edward Tunstall, information officer for enterprise information systems at $8.5 billion pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co., expects plenty of work for contractors at his shop past the Y2K fix. "About half of the people involved in Y2K here were from the outside," he says. "The relationships we've developed with those vendors put them in a very good position as we move to objectives other than Y2K." Tunstall says that with Eli Lilly's growth running at 15 percent-and corporate investments in IT continuing to grow at a similar pace-the company's preferred vendors won't experience any significant decline in work. "As the company grows, the infrastructure, the amount of software we're building, the number of help desk calls and everything else grows as well," he says. "Also, these vendors have gained a greater familiarity with what we're doing and what our environment looks like." In many cases, Y2K services were delivered by outside companies that had already been doing consulting and/or contracting for the company for some time. It's unlikely that the termination of remediation projects will disrupt these extended working relationships in any significant way. "We're using our auditor, Arthur Andersen, which already has an understanding of our business," explains Tim Coffey, IS director at ITT Fluid Technology Corp., a unit of $8.8 billion ITT Industries. "When this assignment is done, we will continue to use them for auditing, host implementations and other work on a project-by-project basis." There also are Y2K specialists who believe the remediation business will remain active. "A lot of companies are already in triage mode," says John Grover, president of Millennium Plus, a remediation consultancy. "They may have their most critical systems fixed by Jan. 1, 2000, but they'll have lots of other work that needs to be done after that." Cap Gemini's Woodward is skeptical about that possibility. "I think it's unrealistic to expect remediation work to continue past the year 2000," he says. "If a company finds that it can actually run its business without an application, I doubt they're going to invest in further remediation." Lenny Liebmann is a computer journalist based in Highlands, N.J. He can be reached at ll@exit109.com. Copyright ® 1998 CMP Media Inc.