That Y2K Bug Ain't Dead Yet

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Note the date on this story. This one kind of popped out of nowhere.

JULY 21, 2000

TECHNOLOGY

That Y2K Bug Ain't Dead Yet But small businesses are almost rid of the New Year's party guest

First the bad news: The Y2K extravaganza is still with us.

Then the good news: Small companies are much closer to being rid of the Y2K bug once and for all than their bigger brethren.

Small tech companies are all but rid of the century's most famous computer bug. A PricewaterhouseCoopers survey shows that only 3% of these concerns still have ongoing Y2K projects, which eat up about 8% of their information-technology budgets. Large tech businesses are still somewhat mired in Y2K fixes -- 12% say they have lingering repairs or projects under way. For big tech companies, Y2K undertakings represent about 9% of the current fiscal year's IT budget. Most tech companies spend about 7% to 9% of their operational budget on IT, according to PwC.

"Small companies are much more likely to have an infrastructure that is more flexible and can be upgraded as a company grows," says PwC survey director Pete Collins, noting that small businesses have been buying Y2K-compliant software as they expand. "They are much less likely to have a hangover problem."

Large companies with complex systems sometimes need to put a temporary patch on a problem and move on, adds Collins. The Y2K bug is forcing them to go back and make sure software problems are actually fixed, not merely avoided.

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jul2000/te000721.htm

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), October 18, 2000


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