Almost 1,300 Hardware and Software Products Undergo Y2K Compliance Changes in October

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/991108/pa_infolia_1.html

Quote:

"Infoliant Records Another Astonishing Negative Change Rate; 155 Products No Longer Deemed Y2K Compliant by Manufacturers"

-- hamster (hamster@mycage.com), November 08, 1999

Answers

Good find Hamster........( snip ) All of these changes in late 1999 may mean that companies who thought they had solved the Y2K problem early might experience problems in 2000. The possibility of "BITR" just went out the window....

-- kevin (innxxs@yahoo.com), November 08, 1999.

The changes might also mean that the company lawyers decide their liability was lower in claiming NONcompliance than it would be if they claimed compliance. It may have nothing at all to do with their technical evaluation of their product.

Y2k is a lawyer-driven event. Vendor surveys are half-and-half legal issues and practical ones. Nonresponses are purely legal issues. Close-mouthed corporations owe something to stock valuation fears, but probably owe as much to their legal advice.

Sometimes I think the world would be better off with less legal advice.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), November 08, 1999.

There are two things to be concerned about:

1300 have changed, 155 (11.9%) are now marked as non-compliant.

BUT that means that any company using previous versions of these 1145 products MUST now check (and probably upgrade) their versions of EVERY ONE of the INSTANCES of the use of these products: if 4000 PC's use product "XYZ" - then all 4000 must be updated.

If 250 sensors or controller of version/part number 12345678 from vender ABCD are used, then all 250 must be "re-replaced" and verified. This throws a lot of previous survey and remediation work out the window.

FOR COMPANIES THAT THOUGHT THEY WERE COMPLIANT.....

--

Now, the bad news: 12% of these are declared non-compliant - not only must previously compliant companies re-survey and re-repplace or repair, but an addtional ???? number of companies are faced with addtional problems they DIDN'T think were bad.

In other words - there are 12% more "fix-on-failure" systems out there in the world's economy that will DEFINITELY BREAK. No questions or maybe's or guesses: these systems will break. And there is precious little time - even for "aware" companies - to do anything about it.

orries me about that is not only have 1300 products changed: because

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), November 08, 1999.

I suppose the pollies will say that if there are any problems with these products, they are probably just cosmetic or display problems. Yep, every bloody one of them.

-- Larry (cobol.programmer@usa.net), November 08, 1999.

Think of all the SME's that checked websites and other resources to see if the stuff they use is compliant, and it was when they checked months ago, but now is not. These SME's arent going to go back and re-check, they think they are compliant.

How many "compliant" companies are now going to be "FIX ON FAILURE" and they dont even know it.

-- hamster (hamster@mycage.com), November 08, 1999.

madmonk@hawaiian.net), November 08, 1999.

Think we'll see NT Service Pack 7 coming soon? I bet there are some shops that haven't even gone on to 5 yet.

-- Tim (pixmo@pixelquest.com), November 08, 1999.