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

To: flatsville who wrote (5628)	5/2/1999 9:56:00 AM
From: flatsville	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

Comments? kcstar.com BUSINESS FINN BULLERS and DAVID HAYES: The hype about Y2K is beginning to ebb By DAVID HAYES and FINN BULLERS - Columnist Date: 04/30/99 22:15 CHICAGO -- The people who run Comdex, the nation's top technology trade show, must be wondering just what to think about this whole Y2K thing. They flew in an expert from California to talk about Y2K contingency planning. Fewer than 20 people showed up -- that's 20 of the more than 80,000 people who attended the trade show in Chicago last week. The story was much the same on the second day of the show. Lawyers were flown in from both coasts to talk about Y2K legal issues. Those who showed up for the panel discussion wouldn't have filled one row in a room that could hold 200. And the session on "Y2K silver linings"? Forget it. Maybe Howard Anderson, managing director of the Yankee Group, a Boston research firm, summed it up best when he talked to a group of industry analysts and reporters before the show began. "Y2K is over. Now what happens?" Anderson's point was aimed at Y2K spending. He believes information technology professionals at major U.S. corporations have been on a financial sugar high, chalking up all kinds of spending to Y2K. Does the sales department need new marketing software? Put it in the Y2K budget. "If you give a 2-year-old a hammer, everything becomes a nail," Anderson said. "If you give an I.T. professional extra funding for Y2K, everything looks like Y2K." That type of hand-in-the-cookie-jar thinking has led to unprecedented overstatement about Y2K, Anderson said. "Y2K is easily the most overhyped issue of the last five years," Anderson said. "Everybody swore to each other that it was a bigger and bigger and bigger problem." Anderson believes the capper came when other research firms projected that 1 trillion lines of computer code in the U.S., and another trillion lines overseas, had to be examined and fixed. He took a slap at projections that Y2K would cost $600 billion worldwide. His projection? Because most Yankee Group clients are spending about 15 to 20 percent of their technology budgets on Y2K, and a total of $706 billion is spent yearly by government and corporations worldwide on technology, Anderson said about $100 billion a year was spent on Y2K. "Maybe $300 billion over the last three years," he said. More from Comdex There were lots of Y2K mixed signals at Comdex. While almost no one was attending a session on Y2K contingency planning, Microsoft Corp. employees were in the hallway surveying conventioneers to determine whether the problem would keep computer professionals too busy to travel to other trade shows later this year. On the show floor where more than 500 companies exhibited, the "Y2K Pavilion" -- which consisted of a multilevel marketing promoter, three or four small software companies and the General Services Administration -- well, let's say you could walk around without getting jostled. But at a session on hot trends in technology that drew hundreds, there was lots of nervous laughter and head nodding when a panelist made a comment about the potential for problems on and after Jan. 1. And locally Things are slowing down for Steve Hewitt, who spent much of the winter in a nationwide crusade to bring common sense to Y2K. After appearing on the front page of The Wall Street Journal and taking on the Rev. Jerry Falwell for his apocalyptic Y2K sermonizing, the Raytown editor and former preacher's speaking schedule mushroomed. That was then. "I do think things are calming down. Radio interviews are declining and so are the crowds at Y2K meetings," Hewitt said. "I have heard that surveys show a decline in fear, and sales are off on much of the Y2K junk that is for sale." As for Falwell, he has yet to revise his $30 doom-and-gloom Y2K video and replace it with a more moderate viewpoint, as his publicist promised us earlier this year. The publicist didn't return phone calls this week. Hewitt was scheduled to speak at Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., last month, but it was canceled. "It was very discouraging," Hewitt said. He still wants Falwell to clarify his Y2K position, but after sending an e-mail and fax, Hewitt has not received an answer. Just another day The latest report issued Friday from the North American Energy Reliability Council shows that 75 percent of the electric utility industry has completed Y2K testing and fixes, up from 44 percent last November. Fewer than 3 percent of all components tested require fixes, said NERC President Michehl Gent. Incorrect dates in some logs showed up, but in nearly all cases, Y2K "does not affect functions that keep the lights on in homes and businesses." Some utilities, however, will not meet the NERC compliance deadline of June 30, the report states. And some Y2K work on generators is not being completed until regularly scheduled maintenance outages. "The bottom line," Gent said, "is that for the typical person or business in North America, the supply of electricity will be like that on any other New Year's Day."