Y2K PROBLEMS WILL LINGER FOR 30 MONTHS

Steve Alexander / Star Tribune-Minneapolis

The script for Y2K is all wrong. Instead of Y2K failures occurring at midnight on Dec. 31, they will be spread over a 30-month period that will begin in July. So says the Gartner Group, a leading computer industry consulting firm based in Connecticut.

This is revisionist stuff, since practically all Y2K scenarios to date have focused on the potential for serious computer failures at midnight on Dec. 31. But Gartner maintains that only 10 percent of Y2K failures will occur within two weeks of Jan. 1.

In an interview, Dale Vecchio, a research director in Gartner Group's Y2K practice in Stamford, Conn., said his firm has been eyeing a multi-month Y2K impact since the middle of last year. But Gartner analysts have been frustrated that the public debate about Y2K has continued to focus on the Jan. 1 millennium date change, he said.

"People haven't quite gotten it," Vecchio said. "They have been too focused on the single time boundary and not enough on what they may have to deal with before the time boundary occurs."

Why should Y2K start in 1999 and stretch into 2001? In a recent speech in San Diego, Lou Marcoccio, another research director of Gartner's Y2K practice, said the causes will be forecasting software that looks six months into the future, the beginning of new fiscal years for many corporations and some "date-related anomalies in software code." The number of Y2K failures will increase further in October as forecasting software that looks three months ahead runs up against the Jan. 1, 2000, date and still more companies begin new fiscal years, Marcoccio said.

In Gartner's view, 25 percent of Y2K computer failures will occur in 1999, 55 percent will occur in 2000 and 15 percent will occur in 2001. The other 5 percent occurred before 1999. While computer system failures will be spread throughout the 30-month period, the failures of devices containing embedded computer chips -- such as factory process control units or building temperature control systems -- will peak at midnight on Dec. 31, Gartner said.

The research firm also predicted that 10 percent of all failures will last three days or longer. While Gartner's extended Y2K impact scenario is at odds with most discussions of Y2K impact, the company's leadership role in raising awareness of Y2K practically guarantees that its findings will not be ignored. Gartner has consistently been the leader in estimating the technical cost of Y2K and projects that the software costs alone will be $300 billion to $600 billion worldwide. Other analysts have estimated that related costs, including lawsuits, could push total Y2K expenses to $1 trillion.

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-- Bill (billdale@lakesnet.net), April 22, 1999