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Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jwk who wrote (2699)	10/13/1998 7:43:00 PM
From: scott ross	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

From North's site, regarding embedded and utilities. This is not the 3 out of 100,000 that I read about in manufacturing, but it's not far off: This is from COMPUTERWORLD (Oct. 10). * * * * * * * * * Embedded year 2000 problems are kind of like Elvis sightings: A lot of people say they've experienced one, but actual occurrences are hard to find. . . . Some early reports indicate the problem may be less serious than feared. Washington Water Power, a Spokane, Wash.-based electric and gas utility, tested 540,000 embedded components and found only 1,800 that contained year 2000 date dependencies, said year 2000 communications liaison Jay Hopkins. "Of those 1,800, only 234 have needed to be remediated," he said. Hopkins said the Bonneville Power Administration, which controls about 80% of generating capacity in the Pacific Northwest, is "finding the same thing." But Hopkins conceded that there may be more year 2000 problems lurking in nuclear generating plants than in the older, relatively simple hydroelectric plants his utility has checked. That's partly because many hydro plants are old enough that they don't rely heavily on computers at all. . . . The amount of work that needs to be done on embedded systems also depends on how old the equipment is, said David Krauthamer, corporate director of IT at Advanced Fibre Communications (AFC), a Petaluma, Calif.-based vendor of telecommunication equipment. Generally speaking, the older the equipment, the greater the chance that a fix is needed, Krauthamer said. AFC also has representatives in place in each department. An IT-lead team and a representative from the company's legal department periodically review the status of the remediation work. The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport identified 115 embedded systems after an affairs committee made up of airlines that use the Washington airport raised the issue last fall. For about a third of the systems, the equipment vendor claims to have a problem. For another third, the vendor says there is no problem, and for the final third, the vendor doesn't know or hasn't told the airport, said Burr Stewart, the airport's administrative projects director. Link: computerworld.com