Spooky stuff Bugs. For those who think we missed the Y2K window of opportunity.
EDS Y2K about-face raises Win 95 doubts
Services giant says Microsoft reversal prompts its massive migration to 98
By Julia King
03/29/99 Acting on year 2000 advice it said it got from Microsoft Corp., IT services giant Electronic Data Systems Corp. is launching a massive, belated, multimillion-dollar migration of more than 100,000 user desktops to Microsoft's Windows 98 operating system.
Internal EDS memos obtained by Computerworld attribute the about-face to a change in position by Microsoft on its recommended year 2000 strategy.
"Microsoft has recently reversed their recommendation ... and will not guarantee [that] Windows 95 will be Y2K-ready, nor will they develop a migration path from Windows 95 to Windows 2000," said EDS CIO Gary Rudin in a March 16 memo to EDS business-unit executives.
The big question is why Microsoft hasn't released the same information to the thousands of other companies that plan to stick with patched-up Windows 95 operating systems through the millennium rollover. Currently, about 125 million corporate desktops worldwide run on Windows 95, according to Dan Kusnetzky, an analyst at International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass.
And what is EDS telling its customers? The company, which takes in close to $2 billion in revenue annually from managing about 900,000 desktops for corporate and government clients, now appears to be scrambling to get its desktops year 2000-ready.
Company spokesman Red Byrum declined to comment, saying only that EDS will advise its clients on a case-by-case basis.
Microsoft, meanwhile, insisted it has never advised EDS or any other corporate customer to remain on Windows 95 or upgrade to Windows 98 to be year 2000-ready.
"Rather, we have been saying for some time that Windows NT Workstation is appropriate for [enterprise] users and Win 95 and Win 98 for home users" in general, said Craig Beilinson, a Windows product manager at Microsoft. "If you're a customer who has Win 95 and you're debating which direction to go today, there's no question it should be to Windows Workstation 4.0," he said.
"That's like giving everybody a Lexus," said one information technology manager. "It's ludicrous."
"What's disturbing is that Microsoft keeps finding things that aren't year 2000-compliant," said John Scannello, director of IT planning at Consolidated Edison Company of New York Inc. By way of example, he noted that Microsoft recently informed users that Service Pack 4, which the vendor issued as a year 2000 fix for NT 4.0, isn't altogether year 2000-compliant. So now there's a Service Pack 5.
Talk Business
"Microsoft's approach is really aimed at hobbyists - people that want to play with everything and tweak things," Kusnetzky said. "Businesses have a different purpose. They want to use hardware and software to make money."
In March 1998, Microsoft launched a year 2000 Web site where users can download various patches for year 2000 bugs for several Microsoft products, including Windows 95. According to the EDS memos, Microsoft won't guarantee that Windows 95 will be year 2000-ready. Microsoft told Computerworld it has no plans to make Windows 95 fully year 2000-compliant. The company has released a year 2000 fix for Windows 98, which it originally claimed was year 2000-compliant.
EDS spokesman Reed Byrum labeled Microsoft's position as "curious." It was "within the last few months" that Microsoft advised EDS to migrate to Windows 98 for year 2000 purposes, he said. "We're following their advice," he insisted.
With less than 10 months remaining until Jan. 1, 2000, EDS, which has 110,000 employees, is deploying Windows 98 enterprisewide. Currently, EDS runs four different versions of Windows 95. A technician will need to visit at least half the company's desktops to complete the upgrade, which could have "a significant impact on the field support team," according to a March 18 memo from desktop technology manager John Finch. Another 30% to 50% of users can apply the upgrade independently, the memo predicted.
Time and Money
If EDSstuck with Windows 95, the memos indicated, technicians would need to visit all desktops, first to determine which of the four versions each user was running, and second to install the different Windows 95 year 2000 patches that would be required. As a result, upgrading to Windows 98 is viewed by EDS as the more cost-effective measure.
EDS declined to comment on the cost of the upgrade or how long it would take. In fact, Byrum called the entire migration "a nonissue."
But Capers Jones, chief scientist at Artemis Management Systems Inc., a consultancy in Burlington, Mass., estimated the combined cost of labor, software and downtime to be "at least $1,000 a machine." That comes out to $110 million for the 110,000 EDS employees if each one has a PC.
Meanwhile, EDS's massive, late-in-the-day decision to migrate to Windows 98 left both analysts and users scratching their heads.
"If Win 95 doesn't have a clear path to Win 2000, then Win 98 wouldn't either" because they're based on the same architecture, Scannello said. What's more, Microsoft has been positioning Windows 98 as a consumer desktop.
Con Edison, which has 10,000 desktops, about two-thirds of which run on Windows 95, plans to remain on the operating system, eventually moving to NT. In the meantime, "we're not going to chase this tail," Scannello said. Instead, Con Edison will go with patches for any significant problems.
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