The Year 2000: 21st Century Fix

Steve Gold reports on the solutions being proposed to deal with the millennium bug

As many resellers will have noticed, there is a degree of fear running through the corporate world about the year 2000 problem. The problem, also known as the millennium bug, centres on the use of six-digit date fields (MMYY) by most applications more than a few years old.

Because these applications assign only two digits to the year, when 1999 turns into 2000, many applications will crash, misbehave or freeze. The programmers just never envisaged that their applications would still be around at the end of the century.

Over the past year, more and more professional bodies have formed working parties and committees to discuss and tackle the millennium bug. Matters took a serious turn in February when David Atkinson, the MP for Bournemouth East, announced that his private member?s bill on the year 2000 problem had passed its second reading in the Commons and was at the committee stages. The bill looks set to pass this stage and, assuming it receives royal assent later this year, it will pass into law, amending sections 234/4 and 719 of the Companies Act. It will force companies to assess the millennium compliancy of their computer systems, as well as mandate company directors to propose a plan of action to shareholders.

According to Intentia, a software development company until recently known as Movex UK, many corporations that have paid out significant sums of money to resolve their year 2000 software problems should be able to recover these monies under a software maintenance contract with their maintainer ? assuming they have such a contract.

Intentia MD Mike Nutter says software firms that offer products which are unable to cope with the millennium date change should now provide the necessary changes within the terms of their software maintenance contracts.

?It?s the developer?s problem, not the customer?s problem,? says Nutter. He adds that users should insist on the free provision of any new software being developed.

Nutter is also offering to advise customers about the approach they should take with their suppliers.

?The total cost of fixing the problem has been estimated to be as high as $600 billion. This huge investment will bring no benefits to companies other than ensuring that they are able to continue to function in the new millennium,? he says.

Nutter claims that software developers have been aware of the extent of the problem since the late 1980s, but many companies have continued to sell products that are unable to cope with the date change.

?Companies should look carefully at their software and decide whether they should have to pay further for changes to a product if it ceases to work in just three years? time,? he says. ?This type of thing would not be acceptable in any other sector. Would you pay for a car that will stop running at midnight on 31 December 1999??

Nutter claims that Intentia?s suite of business integration software has been year 2000 compliant since 1992.

?No Intentia customer will have a sleepless night on 31 December 1999 wondering whether they will still be in business the next day.?

The Electronics & Information Industries Forum (EIIF) ? a collaborative cross-industry initiative between the Federation of the Electronics Industry (FEI) and the Computing Services & Software Association (CSSA) ? has published a free briefing document, Dealing with the Year 2000 Problem, as part of its activities aimed at helping organisations cope with the issue.

The document guides IT users through the main steps from convincing the decision-takers of the importance of the issue through to establishing a year 2000 programme, creating an inventory and sorting out the problem. The publication claims to highlight the potential problem of organisations being frozen into inaction because of fear of the amount of work that is obviously involved. It urges them to start planning now.

According to Rob Wirszycz, the director general of the CSSA, the publication adds to a number of other activities being carried out by the EIIF on the problem, including a directory of organisations that provide specific year 2000 date change products and services.

Other publications from the EIIF include a questionnaire which can be used by organisations with their suppliers to determine how their products will cope with the year 2000.

Voices calling for year 2000 solutions to be thrashed out right now include some unlikely sources, among them Dai Davis, head of the Computer Law Practice Group at lawyer Eversheds. Davis claims that businesses must act now to control their losses from the predicted software failure due in the year 2000.

?It?s not the first general software failure that has been predicted ? software has fallen over in a predictable way almost from the day it was first mass produced and it is an oversight by companies if they do not take steps now to manage the situation,? he says.

According to Davis, as 31 December 1999 is rapidly looming, customers will be looking at their suppliers and pointing a finger at them if their systems fail to operate after that date.

He also says customers are under a legal duty to mitigate their losses, and adds that prudent customers should be auditing their software systems now to determine where likely problems will occur. If they do not have the relevant software expertise in-house, they should consider hiring a consultant in to advise them.

According to Davis, once they have identified the systems that could potentially be affected, software suppliers can be approached to find out what action they intend to take to rectify the problem. He notes that, if a supplier is unable to assist, it may mean that a customer can bring a legal claim against that supplier, but this will depend on the exact terms of the contract.

Just as customers should be looking to audit their systems, so should software suppliers ? and that includes resellers. Suppliers, claims Davis, need to consider the number of users of each system, along with the cost-effectiveness of any solution available to make those systems year 2000 compliant.

Davis says that, if it is not cost-effective to make those systems compliant, a supplier will need to consider other options. It may be possible, he suggests, to terminate any maintenance contracts that might otherwise bind the supplier into rectifying the software.

When deciding whether it is cost-effective to rectify software, Davis says suppliers ? including resellers ? should be aware of whether they have a potential legal liability to rectify the software under their original contracts to supply. It is only then that suppliers can make an informed judgement on the matter. Prudent suppliers, he maintains, are already considering all their options to ?stay ahead of the game?.

So what is the IT industry and its resellers doing to tackle the year 2000 problem? Despite what the media suggests, the channel is doing quite a few things. For example, late last year ICL Sorbus ? Fujitsu ICL?s pan-European multi-vendor service division ? and Asset Software International (ASI) joined forces to combat the problem.

ICL is marketing its Dateproof range of services that it says will help organisations achieve a smooth transition through to the millennium. ASI?s Asset Pro, meanwhile, is billed as being able to identify all software within an organisation and highlight which packages need to be checked for year 2000 compliance.

Both companies are actively trying to help organisations understand the potential impact on business, with planning, managing and implementing and testing solutions.

?Analysts suggest that the year 2000 problem is expected to cost at least $500 billion, absorbing some 50 per cent of the world?s total IT budget from now to the millennium,? says Glen Horgan, ICL Sorbus marketing manager.

?If businesses are involved in forecasting, issuing memberships, policies or long-life loans, sell-by dating, or use computerised personnel systems, then they will need help in adapting their systems. Simply trying to issue invoices could cause serious problems.?

According to ASI, UK companies also need to be aware of forthcoming legal requirements. Public companies must include in their annual report a statement detailing their IT contingency plans to manage the year 2000 date change.

?There is the risk of consequent liability of directors, with regard to share price degradation, if such plans are not yet made,? says Chris Brown, ASI Europe sales director. ?The year 2000 problem is an issue at board level for every company and organisation that uses IT because they may not be able to operate beyond the millennium.?

ICL Sorbus has opened a helpdesk for customers during office hours on 0181 308 6505.

Logica, meanwhile, says it can save its clients up to 30 per cent of the costs associated with preparing for year 2000 with its integrated millennium services group, which it launched on to the channel last August.

Dave Allen, business development manager for the millennium services group, says Logica has employed the best of breed in the key three elements at the heart of the year 2000 challenge: project management, software tools and programming resources.

He says Logica has created a uniquely balanced offering. This approach has been embodied in the recent agreement with Viasoft, one of the leading year 2000 tool vendors for the IBM mainframe market.

?We have analysed the problem and have put together products and services to enable Logica to offer a total solution,? he says.

Allen says Logica?s approach to year 2000 is based on its experience in managing large and complex projects. The company maintains that it has in place the project management methodologies capable of delivering throughout the key phases of a compliance exercise.

Mark Chapman, the founder of Chepstow-based PHD Group, claims he has solved the year 2000 problem using intranet technology. He says organisations should use intranets to tackle the problem because this will allow them to bypass the need to use a new four-digit data code system. He claims that intranet technology will give users sufficient breathing space to develop new systems to beat the problem, without racing and costing a fortune in development costs.

Instead of having the computer system process information and data, Chapman?s solution is to reroute the data output over an internal TCP/IP link within an organisation to a PC which extracts the data and changes it by replacing the data strings with the four-digit system. This data can then be presented in the form of a virtual Web page on the user?s screen.

Chapman says that the cost of installing a Web server and intranet within an organisation can be offset by the cost savings that accrue from using intranet technology. ?It?s the Web server which changes the date code to the correct century to enable it to be processed. The individual user is provided with a low-cost Web browser which will be the new front-end application to the Web server,? he explains.

?When the data has been finished with, it can either be returned to the existing mainframe computer, stored in its two-digit form, or stored in a new computer with a four-digit code, this main computer effectively becoming a warehouse to hold the data.?