Y2K Problem in a Nutshell and
What We Offer.
Some Background Information.
The millennium bug, also referred to as the Y2K problem, is the name given to the problem caused by the expected failure of computer technology to effectively handle the transition between December 31, 1999 and January 1, 2000. You must have heard so much from the media and relevant authorities about its cause and effect, technical jargons like BIOS, Real-Time Clock, Sliding Windows, Date Encapsulation, etc.. But, just what is the Y2K crisis and how would it affect you? We will attempt to explain this in the most layman term possible and hope that you will take a few minutes of your time to read this, because it might be your last chance to salvage your valuable assets -- the ones you have been painfully building over the years.
The Y2K problem originates from the 60s when programmers, in an attempt to save storage space, wrote program codes to represent year value in 2-digit form. The year 1968 were abbreviated as 68, 1980 as 80 and so on. When newer hardware and programs were designed based on this architecture, the problem snowballed. Come the midnight of 31 Dec 1999, most computers will not roll over from 99 to 00. And those that do might not recognise the digit 00 as year 2000 but 1900. Why? You asked, programmers are supposed to be intelligent people, didn’t they foresee such problem arising in the fast approaching 21st century? The fact is, they did. You see in those days, things are just a little more expensive than what it is today. Can you imagine a pricey monochrome screen could only show 80 column X 24 rows of letters; a top-of-the-range dot matrix printer, punching at a speed way beyond the imagination of any kids today, could only print 132 columns per line; 1 megabyte of memory, priced today at about $0.05, cost almost $3,200,000 (this is not a misprint) in US dollars!? So now, will you still blame them for saving those billions of dollars for the industries?
How Will It Affect Your Organisation?
The computers’ misinterpretation of 00 as year 1900 will cause operations involving sorting, comparing, indexing and computations to encounter errors. These errors can "crash" your system, causing applications to operate incorrectly, or worse, computer might run fine but produces incorrect information and data that’s very difficult to detect. Can you imagine you are no longer sure if those date-related/deviated calculations coming out from your systems are reliable? Below are examples of some problems you might faced on the first working morning after 1 Jan 2000:
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Financial Records of your creditors/debtors, outstanding accounts, etc. disappear from your system because your accounting software (now thinking that you’re in 1900) cannot track something that is "in the future"! Your clients may even be asked to pay over-calculated (by 100 years’ worth of) interest or worse, nothing. One question to ask yourself -- do you know where your monies are!M
Inventory is usually maintained at a "first-in-first-out" or "first-in-last-out" basis. The change of date as mentioned will confuse your computers. As a result, your inventory cannot be updated, with items "missing" or turned "obsolete", when they’re not; Profit & Loss statement generated consequently becomes incorrect.M
Bills and Invoices could not be churned out due to corrupted inventory record. And your program cannot understand why invoices are processed from an older date (yesterday 31 Dec 1999, today 1 Jan 1900!?)As a result, additional manpower and man-hour have to be employed to resolve conflicts, appease customer dissatisfaction, examine the corrupted data entry by entry. All these, in the expense of your valuable business hours and opportunity cost!
It’s Global Impact.
According to the Gartner Group (a world renowned international research firm), 90% of applications will be affected by the Y2K problem and systems will crash, if the century problem is not corrected before 1999. Peter de Jager’s consulting group (a guru in Y2K Problem Management) found that 95% of all PCs will fail a simple year 2000 test. And 97% of all Pre-1997 computers cannot roll over from 1999 to 2000, according to Computer Weekly.
Reuter also reported recently that world economy growth will be profoundly impeded if the bug is not fixed. At last count the repair cost alone, in terms of hardware and software, would cost the world 1 trillion US dollars and counting, that’s US$1,000,000,000,000!! And this does not include litigation cost, as a result of customers suing suppliers for compensation resulting from late deliveries (due to breakdown of system); CEO/MD being sued by shareholders because of Y2K related business sufferings -- when a company is unable to send out invoices, respond to customer queries, update inventory and process bills, what business is there to talk about?
It’s Local Impact.
"There will be a transfer of wealth from companies that are not Y2K prepared to those that are." -- National Computer Board of Singapore
A lot of ministries/statutory boards, institutions and companies, both local and overseas have already made Year 2000 Compliance as one of their criteria in selecting business partners. Many of their contracts/agreements drafted also allow them to indemnify any vendors for damages should they short-supply, even if it is due to Y2K related problems.
"In today’s highly competitive and mature markets, it is fatal to any company in every logical sense if a backbone such as the computer systems collapses. This is more so when companies are trying their very best to recover and excel from the regional crisis. Imagine if your competitor has a foolproof Y2K compliant system and business is as usual, how about yours?"
But, imagine if your competitors’ systems are not compliant, and yours is...
So What Should I Do And Why Start Early?
Have your systems checked by IT professionals that are familiar with both software and hardware compliance, and fast! The fact is, we don’t have full 500 odd days from now till 1 Jan 2000 to examine your computers. After deducting weekends and holidays, we have only less than 350 working days left. Year 2000 conformance requires continuous monitoring, troubleshooting and these take time. It is much like baking of cake -- bringing in more chefs (IT professionals) at the last minute to complete the task will never get the job done in time.
Besides, the later you decide to engage these chefs, the higher the chances that they are not going to be there for you anymore. There is a severe physical limit of human resources to solve this problem and it is predicted that by end 1998, all experience Y2K consultants would have been fully booked for the whole of next year. Consultation fee driven by demand, will skyrocket.
But Why Choose Y2K Crisis Control?
The common practice for Y2K consulting firms today is that: when a company enlist their services, they usually diagnose and implement changes to your system with or without your knowledge, based on what they think is good for you. At the end of the day, you pay for the consultation fee and other hardware/software cost incurred throughout the entire certification process. This is either charged in a lump sum or calculated based on the time spent on your systems -- an experience Y2K specialist can cost as much as $200 per hour!
Unlike these firms, our price tag is smaller and most importantly, more transparent. We achieve this by splitting our audit into 2 phases, namely the EVALUATION and the PIC stages (which stands for Planning, Implementation and Control).
We will first examine your systems in the Evaluation Stage for hardware and software conformity. After which, a detail report of our findings will be presented to you. With the help of our recommendation in the report, you will then decide on the computer you wish to proceed to the PIC stage, in which we will look into the most cost-effective manner to upgrade/update your system. We will also assist you to identify those computers which are more mission critical in your company, from those that perform only minor task and can do without any changes. In any case, you are only charged to the stage you wish to complete, based on your budget.
You see at Y2K Crisis Control, we basically let you decide what you really need.
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Copyright Y2K Crisis Control. All rights reserved.Tel: (65) 8411606 Fax: (65) 7412230 Email:
year2000@singnet.com.sg