A blast from the pastgreenspun.com : LUSENET : Electric Utilities and Y2K : One Thread |
I thought the folks who have been frequenting this forum for some time now might appreciate the following article, which I ran into during a "cleanout" of the archives. After you read it, you might want to do a bit of research on your own to see how far that all the companies mentioned have come since November, 1997.
Updated at 11:31:54 AM MST Sunday, November 9, 1997
Is year 2000 crisis just hype?
Agencies, businesses say preparations are well under control
By GREG MILLER
Los Angeles Times
One after another, the speakers stood before rapt audiences and conjured images of millennial Armageddon.
"This is a national emergency," said one. "I'm very worried about the ability of a country to defend itself when it has no electricity." "Everything is going to fall apart," said another. "I'm going to the bank to take out all my money, buy wood because the heat wont work, go home and lock myself in."
A doomsday religious cult? A paranoid militia movement? No, technology professionals at a recent San Francisco conference on the Year 2000 computer problem.
Apocalyptic scenarios permeate speeches, news coverage and even casual conversation about the monumental computer glitch. The forecasts are gripping, frightening - and probably way off.
Ask the experts combing the millions of lines of code that course through the nation's businesses and government agencies. They will tell you that the Year 2000 problem - the inability of some computers to handle 21st century dates - is both real and daunting.
But they also will tell you it is awash in hype: Planes will not drop from the sky. Nuclear reactors will not melt down. Financial institutions will not freeze.
"It's going to be a dud," said David Starr, the chief information officer at Readers Digest, and a former technology officer at General Motors, ITT and Citicorp. "The fuse is going to go down to 2000, and were going to wake up and nothing will have happened."
Starr's optimism is jarring in the face of headlines, such as a recent news magazine cover that predicted Jan. 1, 2000, would be "The Day the World Shuts Down."
But Starr's outlook is shared by others in similar positions at some of the nation's largest companies - including banks, car makers and utilities - as well as trade associations, regulatory offices and government agencies.
Confronting presumed disaster, they are calm and collected. Few expect more than minor disruptions for customers and employees. Many say their critical computer systems dont pay attention to the date and are the least susceptible. Most have been working on the Year 2000 problem for years and expect to finish early.
None of the executives, analysts and experts interviewed for this article would say the problem is a myth. On the contrary, the world's computer resources are being strained as never before.
But they all agreed that software companies, consultants, speakers, authors and even some computer systems managers stand to benefit from the Year 2000 problem, and have an incentive to exaggerate the threat. As one executive put it, "It's in some people's interest to say the sky is falling."
All this over two lousy digits.
The Year 2000 problem stems from a space-saving technique adopted by programmers decades ago, when computer memory was a precious commodity. Instead of using four spaces to record a year, they used two: 1968, for example, was recorded as 68.
Unless fixed, these programs wont know what to do on Jan. 1, 2000. Some may assume time has skipped back to 1900 and spit out erroneous data. Others may gag on the incomprehensible date and lock up.
Individually, the date fields are easy to repair. But they are buried in billions of lines of code around the world.
"It's like weeding a garden," said Sally Katzen, who oversees federal Year 2000 efforts for the Office of Management and Budget. "You just have to get in there and pull the weeds."
The weed-pulling started two years ago at Pacific Gas & Electric, one of Californias largest utilities. John Greer, manager of computer systems, said the San Francisco-based company is on schedule to finish by the end of 1998. "We had a magazine call us, and they were milking us to tell them that everything would turn black," he said. "But its not going to happen."
Thats partly because the computer systems that manage the delivery of electricity are the least vulnerable.
"Our automated systems tell power plants to come on or off to meet demand," Greer said. "All of that is based on monitoring physical conditions - current, voltage and frequency. Theyre not looking at what day of the year it is."
Most nuclear reactors arent even operated by computer, said Jared Wermiel, chief of the controls branch at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Like hospitals, nuclear plants have backup systems that use diesel generators. And safety mechanisms respond to changes in temperature, pressure or power, not the instructions of a computer.
Like most companies, Pacific Gas & Electrics Year 2000 problems are centered in its mainframe computer systems that track bills, payroll and other financial documents that depend on dates. But even that repair work is proceeding better than expected.
Early estimates that the project would cost $42 million have been lowered to about $30 million, partly because in searching for Year 2000 glitches, PG&E has stumbled onto many aging computer systems it can scrap altogether.
Southern California Edison also is ahead of the game. "There will be no impact on Edisons power grid," said Eric Trapp, manager of its Year 2000 effort.
Fixing the problem will never be considered cheap, especially since it offers little payoff other than the privilege of continued existence.
Some worldwide cost estimates for reprogramming or replacing affected computers are as low as $50 billion. But most are in the $200 billion range. Thats what International Data Corp. concluded, for example, after surveying 500 companies last year on their Year 200 spending plans.
But the estimates that get the most attention are substantially higher, and are provided by two consulting firms that stand to profit from the Year 2000 problem: the Gartner Group and Software Productivity Research.
Gartner, which helps design repair strategies, predicts the total bill for Year 2000 problems worldwide could approach $600 billion. That number has been cited repeatedly by the media, industry pundits and members of Congress.
But the Gartner analysts who produced the estimate acknowledge that it is little more than a guess, one they believe has about a 70 percent chance of being right.
"All of this stuff is thumbnail," said Matt Hotle, a Gartner analyst. "If youre trying to use the information for anything more than that, youre putting too much into it."
Hotle and Jones both insist that the worst they are doing is scaring the worlds executives into taking the problem seriously.
It seems to be working. Technology bosses at dozens of companies said that for the first time they have the full attention of their senior executives, partly because the problem is one that even techno-dunces can comprehend.
For that reason, many consulting firms are bypassing technology departments and pitching their Year 2000 fixes directly to top executives.
"I get letters forwarded to me on a weekly basis from the chief executive," Starr said. "They say, 'Are you ready to face your stockholders if your company comes crashing down? Well analyze everything for $1.25 a line."
The more frightened executives become, the easier it is for computer managers to play, as one called it, "the Chicken Little card."
Starr said he knows of three colleagues using the crisis as an excuse to replace entire systems at their companies. For that reason, the huge cost estimates are self-fulfilling prophecies, he said.
Turnover in top technology posts is at an all-time high. Managers are either retiring early to avoid the Year 2000 crunch or leaping at more lucrative offers from more desperate companies.
Among the 250 largest companies in the United States, 40 percent have replaced their top technology executive this year, said Paul Strassman, an industry researcher who was formerly the top technology official with the Pentagon.
The irony, Strassman said, is that technology executives are cashing in on a crisis for which they are partly responsible. After all, they must have known the Year 2000 was coming, and should have known whether their systems were vulnerable.
"The Year 2000 should be seen as a symbolic moment of truth," Strassman said, "an event where management says, 'My God, how did we ever get into this mess?'"
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