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Is your computer ready?

Your PC, the mainframe that issued your last paycheck, the server at your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and a couple of million other computers have a date with destiny -- the Year 2000. It is a date that can't be moved or missed. Will the computers we rely on recognize the relationship between this century and the next? As a result of a historical accident, they've been trained not to.

The worldwide tally for fixing the Year 2000 problem has been pegged at $1.5 trillion US. A more modest estimate by the repsected Gartner Group consulting firm has the global cost set at (only) $600 billion. That's a huge problem for large scale computer owners such as corporations and governments -- but there's a business opportunity in there for somebody who is paying attention. Peter de Jager has been paying attention longer than most anyone. Now de Jager, the one-man early warning system about the Year 2000 date field crisis, has created to share the wealth -- and the risk -- with the rest of us.

Mr. de Jager has created the Year 2000 Index on the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) under the stock symbol YTK. The index brings together those companies that specialized in the assessment, conversion and testing of computer systems for Year 2000 compliance. With as much as $1.5 trillion at stake (de Jagers estimate), the upside potential is huge. So too is the liability -- what if the fixes dont work. Investors could be excused for entertaining the thought of shorting this stock....

YEAR 2000 CLEARINGHOUSE

•Year 2000 Patches for your PC Desktop

•Mainframes are back and they're pissed --or, Solutions for Large Enterprise Computing

The Problem

It is a poorly kept dirty little secret. The operating systems that work just below the surface on computers large and small weren't supposed to last this long.

Decades ago, when memory was scarce, computer programmers squeezed as much code into as small a space as possible.

They scrimped and saved more efficiently than the most zealous coupon clipper. To save precious memory, they reduced four-digit dates (1964) to two-digit dates (64). After all, it was the shorthand we all used in everyday speech and we still all understood each other.

Besides, the programmers reasoned, the code they were writing would long since be replaced by the turn of the century.

Their modesty seems quaint in hindsight. And they were wrong. The fact is that much of that code has not been replaced. Instead, it has mutated into the subsequent generations of software -- after all, it is easier to cut and paste code than write it from scratch.

A cottage industry has grown up around making predictions about how big the problem is, how much it will cost to fix and who is to blame. Some are selling snake oil solutions. Others have begun the hard work of fixing the flaw -- program by program, line by line.

Industry analysts at firms such as Gartner Group and META have reported that less than 30 percent of IT organizations will be year 2000-compliant by the end of 1997, and less than 70 percent by 1999. Also, according to the Gartner Group, the cost of resolution will increase 20 to 50 percent per year as the millennium approaches.

Y2K Trouble at the desktop

Sober reflections on the Y2K Crisis at the PC Desktop from Windows magazine. Crisis, what crisis? The Macintosh has been Y2K compliant since the beginning of time ... or at least, since the first Mac rolled off the assembly line. -- so says Apple Computer.

The year 2000 does not compute, an overview from CNN Your Computer's Date with Destiny, a warning about the condition of your PC's soul from The Computer Paper.

Y2K Crisis: Mainframe or Large Enterprise Computer

Hundreds of solution vendors and organizations are available to help, but many are becoming booked.

As existing resources become booked, there are new entrants to meet the growing demand.

GO2000: Fresh from a successful test in Glasgow, Scotland, Unibol has introduced its GO2000 methodology to the world market. GO2000 provides impact analysis consulting to assess the scale of the year 2000 problem, to define the strategic options for conversion and to formulate a solution to modify the customers' code to make it year 2000 compliant. GO2000 relies on options for conversion and to formulate a solution to modify the customers' code to make it year 2000 compliant. GO2000 relies on over ten years of Unibol's working experience with IBM System/36 and AS/400 systems.

ITAA*2000 certification: The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) has introduced a standards program to examine processes and methods used by companies to perform their Year 2000 software conversions. The group ITAA*2000 is the industry's century date change certification program..

•Avatar Solutions, Inc.

•Century Technology Services, Inc.

•Class Solutions Ltd.

•Complete Y2K Website

•Computer Sciences Corporation

•Compuware

•Data Dimensions

•Datamation

•Digital Consulting

•Peter de Jager

•Federal Government Year 2000 page

•Gartner Group

•IBM Year 2000 page

•Information Technology Association of America

•Management Support Technology Corporation Software Productivity Research, Inc •McCabe & Associates

•Micro Focus

•Microsoft

•NTG International Inc.

•National Institute of Standard and Technology's NIST

•Next Millennium Inc.

•Peritus Software Services, Inc.

•Pitney Bowes Software Systems

•Platinum Y2K Solutions

•Princeton Softech, Inc

•Project21st. Century

•Silver Bullet

•Survive 2000

•Televerde

•Unisys

•A Y2k national user group

•ViaSoft

•Wipro Systems

•Y2K Cinderella Project

•Y2k Links Database

•Year 2000 Team

Y2K News Articles And Information

•International Tax Consequences of Year 2000 Fix Costs

•The Millennium Bomb is near, but businesses don't seem to realize the seriousness of its threat

•Hard Drives and Hard Times in Year 2000: EDS Offers End-to-End Portfolio 2000 to End Millennium Madness

•Year 2000 Computer Bug impact to exceed $2 trillion

•Compuware Rolls Out Millennium Newsletter on the Web