Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Y2K (Year 2000) Stocks: An Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: paul e thomas who wrote (13317)	11/21/1998 3:46:00 AM
From: Risky Business	Respond to of 13949

Flaws found in Y2K conversions The Financial Times Checks by some of the biggest corporations in the United States and Europe have revealed serious flaws in work already undertaken to tackle the millennium computer bomb. Unisys, the U.S. computer systems and services group, said a testing facility in Britain had uncovered problems with more than 20 of Britain's top 100 listed companies. ''Some of the issues we found would have taken their systems down,'' said David Palmester, Year 2000 program manager for Unisys. ''The quality of testing they have undertaken is very worrying.'' The millennium computer bomb problem has come about because of the inability of older systems to recognize the change of date from 1999 to 2000. The fear is that many of these systems will malfunction as a result. Crystal Systems Solutions, an Israeli information technology group, said Ford, Pratt & Whitney and a large German car manufacturer were among 20 U.S. and European companies to commission verification services this year for conversions done by other companies. ''More and more companies that classified their systems as compliant or converted are asking for verifications,'' said Ben Levy, Crystal's vice president of marketing and sales. ''In several cases we found date issues were either missed, not converted or converted wrongly. The problem is that one mistake in one program can cause a major problem to a business.'' Palmester said most of the problems being thrown up in the latest checks were for companies which had attempted to solve the problem in-house. He said this often involved the company employing contractors to address the issue who perhaps were not completely familiar with the systems they were dealing with or the diagnostic tools they were using. David Marshall, managing director of Greenwich Mean Time, a British IT diagnostics company specializing in Y2K solutions, confirmed similar findings. ''Too many companies have attempted to tackle the millennium bomb through a piecemeal approach to their systems.'' Crystal said a verification job for a midsized company with 10 million to 20 million lines of computer code could cost several million dollars and take more than three months to do properly. The emergence of evidence that much Y2K compliance work already undertaken may not have solved the problems will add further concern to governments attempting to contain the situation. It follows a report last week from Cap Gemini, Europe's biggest software and services company, warning that it was too late for governments, organizations and companies in the United States and Europe to solve the millennium bomb problem. It advised the tackling of the problem in essential services as a matter of urgency.