Smooth transition for Y2K no accident, consultants say

January 17, 2000

By Greg Sukiennik

Berkshire Eagle Staff (Massachusetts)

PITTSFIELD -- Was the relative lack of a year 2000 bug a monumental achievement of planning and preventive medicine, or the biggest letdown since Geraldo Rivera's live unveiling of Al Capone's vault? That depends on whom you ask.

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Alan Bauman of CompuWorks Ltd., which did a lot of Y2K compliance testing for business clients last year, said he had heard "virtually nothing" of millennium bug-related failures. "I've talked to a lot of people about it and I can't find anybody," he said.

But Bauman doesn't think the time and effort expended in preventing the problem was a waste. "The reality is, the potential seriousness of Y2K was such that it could have put people out of business."

Still others said that they have indeed been asked to help computer users whose machines failed to do what they were told, or failed to start, period.

Cynthia W. Kadel of Sunshine Ventures said that in conversations with friends and associates in New York, she is learning that there were Y2K "issues," particularly for some major financial institutions.

"I had lunch with someone from a major financial corporation, and she said she was working 12-, 14-hour days on Y2K-related issues," Kadel said.

Locally, Kadel said, there were computer users who called her firm asking for help when Monday, Jan. 3, rolled around.

"We had some of those," she said. "We had some people who tried to access their computers, and they plain simply didn't turn on."

As much money and time as American businesses invested in defeating Y2K problems, there were those who put off Y2K, "or simply didn't want to give up Windows 3.1," she said, referring to the first widely used version of the computer operating system.

Local banks reported that they had made it through the year 2000 transition without a scratch, and Berkshire Medical Center, which set up a Y2K command center early the morning of Dec. 31, reported nothing out of the ordinary.

The hospital system spent 2 1/2 years addressing the problem at a cost of between $3.5 million and $4 million, chief information officer Charles Podesta said.

"I wasn't so surprised with what was happening here," Podesta said of the way America made it through Y2K. "I was surprised watching the new year come across Europe and Russia."

Podesta also spent the early part of the day talking with a colleague in New Zealand whose computer systems were similar to BMC's. "To me, it was well worth it," he said of the consuming time and effort BHS spent on Y2K compliance. "Some of that money was spent on system upgrades, because we knew for a fact that some equipment would not work after January."

Source: San Bernardino Sun archive #109829, California

http://www.newschoice.com/Newspapers/Gannett/Sun/default.asp

-- Lee Maloney (leemaloney@hotmail.com), February 17, 2000