Come Jan. 1, 2000, What Will Your Computer Do?
Joe Kirschner is a bright and honest man, and he ought to be able to take some pride in the 14 years he spent as a computer programmer at IBM. But instead, when he reminisces about the good old days, he tries to remember what went wrong.
“Whatever I did, I’ll fix it! I promise!” proclaims Kirschner, now an IBM marketing manager. But it won’t be that easy. For Kirschner was part of the legion of computer programmers who unwittingly created one of the most peculiar--and, if the alarmists are to be believed, most dangerous--problems ever to strike the world’s formidable computer infrastructure.
Some call it the millennium virus, though it’s not really a virus. It’s only a date change. But believe it or not, when the year changes from 1999 to 2000, all kinds of computers will start acting strangely.
Certain machines will assume that the year is 1900; others will see the 00 as a preprogrammed code and do any of a number of things, such as delete files or shut down entire systems. Unless they are fixed, these computers will not be taking us into 2000 very gracefully--for the shockingly simple reason that a great deal of computer software uses two numbers, rather than four, to record the year when registering a date.
“Forty years ago, none of us thought that our programs would last this long,” recalls Kirschner. “I guess we developed some pretty good programs.”
And now a lot of people will have to develop some pretty good programs to solve the problem. At first blush, it might seem that some relatively simple software machinations could render the whole thing a nonissue, but experts insist that’s not the case.
“Solutions are out there,” says Larry Martin, president and chief executive of Data Dimensions Inc., a Bellevue, Wash., consulting firm specializing in the 2000 transition problem. “But you just can’t throw money at the problem. It requires a careful analysis, a well-developed plan and a lot of time.”
Even home PC users and small businesses need to be aware of the issue. When the date rolls over from Dec. 31, 1999, to Jan. 1, 2000, most PCs will recognize “00” as the year, resulting in problems for date-dependent software programs such as payroll and billing programs.
PCs can be tested for the problem by changing the internal clock and seeing what happens: Type the time and date at the “C” prompt, let the date roll over and see what happens to the software when it runs. (Macintosh users should reset the appropriate control panel.) If there’s a problem, call the manufacturer of the hardware and the software.
For big companies--especially those such as banks that have computerized records dating back many years--2000 poses a major problem. Peter de Jager of De Jager & Co. of Ontario, Canada, one of the leading experts on the subject, points out that it will also affect not only information systems, but also many business and manufacturing processes that involve timed devices.
Other strange effects are brewing. Banks, for example, might consider the problem a risk issue when lending money. “It would be ludicrous to put this requirement on a loan application, but as risks go it’s a large one if you have a company that deals with a lot of date-manipulated data,” says Dave Iacino, senior project manager for the 2000 issue at Bank of Boston.
Iacino says Bank of Boston started its 2000 transition project two years ago, much earlier than most companies. “We first did a high-level survey of information systems. We then drilled down further and counted our lines of code. When we realized we had millions of them, we were concerned about the cost that the industry placed on fixing each line.”
The bank has been dealing with mortgages that would expire after 2000, for example. This has been done on a case-by-case basis, Iacino says, who admits that provides no consistency to the process.
“Our method of doing things has changed since we started dealing with the year 2000,” he says. “Our usual way of operating is plan, plan, plan, do. Now we have to do a lot more plan, do, plan, do, plan, do. Time is running out.”
Solutions run the gamut from getting through the transition period with jury-rigged software to changing two-digit date fields to four-digit--which requires changing each line of code and its data. The latter is the most expensive but the least ambiguous, says Joe Manz, technical manager at IBM’s Integrated Systems Solutions Corp.
Other solutions include the “sunset” method, in which an application is used until it becomes obsolete and is replaced with millennium-compliant software, and the “sliding window method,” in which changes are made as they are needed in a window of time that addresses the needs of the user.
At telecommunications giant GTE Corp., Wayne Russell, program manager for 2000, says the initial process involved researching the level of complexity, the time required and the cost of implementing a solution. Telecommunications companies are among the largest users of date-manipulating software.
Russell looks at the problem philosophically, comparing it with the seven stages of death or divorce: shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing and acceptance. “We are in the bargaining stage, trying to get approval for funding this effort,” says Russell.
“One of the most difficult reasons companies have with paying for this solution is that it provides no additional business advantage,” Russell says. “There’s no return on the investment, other than keeping a company in business.”
Major manufacturers of hardware and software should be in the process of updating their systems for 2000 compliance as well as sharing their solutions information with their customers. “Some companies still don’t want to admit the problem,” says IBM’s Manz.
And many firms that are addressing the problem don’t want to talk about it for fear of spooking customers and investors. Gartner Group, a Stamford, Conn.-based computer consulting firm, estimates that 30% of U.S. companies are taking some type of action, 20% are looking at the issue and 50% are doing nothing.
Many other experts feel it’s too late to avoid a sizable disaster. “If every company started today, they’d only finish two-thirds of the job by the turn of the century,” says Ken Orr, a Topeka, Kan., consultant. “I think the worst business you can be in over the next few years is business-interruption insurance.”
Freelance writer Pat Becker can be reached via e-mail at 103436.541@compuserve.com
