EDITORIAL - The bug that's so big it's a cash cow

Christmas is a good time for making money. Along with the PCs and multimedia gadgetry that will rocket through the retail system with the speed of a bad vindaloo, there's even more cash to be made from the year 2000.

PC Dealer realises the mention of the dreaded Year of the Bug will have some of you gnashing your teeth at yet another reference to what has become the most overexposed topic since Microsoft was accused of being a bully. However, this piece is not intended to warn you about the life-threatening effects of ignoring the bug or how much cash it will cost you. No, this is about resellers taking advantage of the coming crisis now, especially in the public sector. If you have year 2000 experts, put them on a bus and send them to Westminster as quick as you can, because the government is in real trouble. It has just emerged that the government no longer has a bug problem, it has an infestation.

This is the perfect time for those already exploiting the bug - or those hoping to - to create a year 2000 division and start peddling their services. Some would say the market is already saturated with IT consultants specialising in year 2000 ailments. For a start, it should be understood that a year 2000 specialist is someone who used to be a Cobol or Visual Basic programmer, has attended a one-week crash course and doubled his rates. This is not true of all bug specialists, but to say that there are so-called experts making a killing out there would be an understatement.

Millennium bug minister Margaret Beckett last week named the government agencies that were failing in their year 2000 duties. Anyone who drives will not be surprised to learn that the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) is lagging. Others include the Medicine Control Agency and the Inland Revenue, the latter proving the theory that the tax office is far quicker to take your money than dole it out. In fact, the Inland Revenue has 12 bug projects on the go to replace non-compliant systems between March and November 1999. Despite being late already, it figures a deadline just 30 days before B-Day is obviously enough to implement and test its solution. Even defence secretary George Robertson admitted that the bug poses 'a real threat' to Britain's Army defence systems. How reassuring.

There has never been a better time for resellers to exploit the services market - it's meant to be the fattest cash cow of them all, isn't it?

Having sold many of the systems and software to the business community, it just makes sense for resellers to use that foot in the door to exploit the bug. Remember, the countdown for making money off the bug is also ticking.