Flaws found in Y2K conversions

By CHRISTOPHER PRICE and AVI MACHLIS

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.

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-- James Chancellor (publicworks1@bluebonnet.net), November 20, 1998

Answers

Maybe we need world-wide triage for the essential corporations and basic service providers and to focus the remediators without spreading them too thin?

No? Guess it's back to camping 101.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), November 20, 1998.

James:

Is there a link or a date for this article?

-- Donna Mittelstedt (dmittels@csuhayward.edu), November 20, 1998.

I JUST read this article too, and was about to post it. It can be found at:

http:// www.jrnl.com/news/98/Nov/jrn240201198.html

-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), November 20, 1998.

I read the article earlier today. This isn't exactly news to me, all it does is confirm one of our earlier discussions on another thread about the fat lady singing. . . Cap Gemini's report was nothing more than confirmation also.

OK so we are right. Big deal. What is the solution? They are going to declare Y2K a National Emergency and then declare Martial Law. I figured this out months ago.

Question is when and exactly how far are they going to take it?

-- Anna McKay Ginn (annaginn@aol.com), November 20, 1998.

Anna: How far will they take it? The executive orders and directive's say a lot farther that most people would think possible. Gary's martial law category and the articles on worldnetdaily spell some of it out.

Regarding the 'when' in your question, unless they have a standalone compliant infrastucture, communications systems,etc. hiding somewhere wouldn't they have to decalre Martial Law while the existing systems are still up and running. If it's after Y2k hits big will the troops line up and guard the 120 cities on the list or stay home with their families.Remember also that the President can declare a national emergency, as FDR did in March 1933, and Congress has to wait six months before they can execute their power to review it.

-- Robert MIchaels (sonofdust@net.com), November 20, 1998.