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Y2K to hit Asia, Europe most, say experts
Hamburg
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16 AUGUST
FROM one day to the next, aeroplanes will crash, nuclear power plants will melt down, masses of people will be trapped in elevators. Sound like a scene from the latest Hollywood blockbuster? Maybe.
But in reality, the impact of the problems that computers will have in dealing with the year 2000 could be enormous.
``Companies have discovered that the problem is bigger and more difficult than they anticipated,'' says Jacky Oliver of the British offices of Cap Gemini, an international computer consulting firm. ``Resources are running out,'' he says.
Cap Gemini has stated publicly that it could employ as many as 10,000 programmers immediately. The company admits, though, that it had little chance of finding as many qualified candidates as it could use.
``One in ten organisations will fail to meet the deadline for converting their computer systems to handle dates after December 1999,'' says Mr Oliver.
Some experts believe that there will be no catastrophe whatsoever on new year's day 2000 but that we'll see gradual glitches beginning now and increasing as the year 2000 rolls around.
``There will not be a big bang,'' says Guenther Ennen, Year 2000 analyst with the German federal agency for information technology (BSI). ``Instead,'' he says, ``we are expecting a slow progression of problems with which we will have to deal far into the next millennium.''
Indeed, some users of Europe's popular Eurocheque bank card or other credit cards have already experienced what the BSI expert is predicting. There have been reports of some cards failing to work at teller machines because of computer glitches, even though the cards are valid for another two years.
The cards in question have an expiration date in 2000. In some automated teller machines, though, the `00' expiration date is interpreted as the year 1900 rather than the year 2000. Thus, the machines believe the card to have been invalid for 99 years.
But almost everyone could be affected by the year 2000 bug. ``It is not impossible that six-year-old children could suddenly start receiving retirement payments, while actual pensioners suddenly receive nothing,'' says Detelf Henze, a German software expert.
One of the biggest problems right now is that nobody knows the extent to which the Year 2000 bug will really pose a risk. ``We don't know everything that could happen. That's why there is no universal antidote,'' Mr Henze says.
How could the situation have gotten so bad? The roots of the problem date back to the early days of the information age. Computer memory was expensive and limited, and programmers tried to save memory by omitting the first two digits of the year in dates.
In the 1960s, some programmes represented that year by only one digit. But in 1968, the problems that could arise from this practice in 1970 were discovered, and a second digit was added. At the time, nobody could imagine that the same software would still be in use 30 years later, with the year 2000 causing the computer chaos that is now commonly described as the Y2K problem.
At a meeting of US computer manufacturers in July, Edward Yardeni, economist at Deutsche Bank Securities, warned of a possible global recession that could be caused by the Y2K problem. He compared the recession to the oil crisis of 1973-74.
``It is naively optimistic to assume that the business world will experience no problems,'' says Mr Yardeni. He even deems a collapse of the US stock market in the year 2000 possible. However, shortly after Mr Yardeni delivered his speech, the computers on wall street passed a ten-day test of Y2K compliance.
Many companies around the world are behind in rubbing out the Year 2000 computer bug and recent research suggests that Europeans and Asians may be especially hard hit.
``European companies are still moving too slowly to deal with the threat to their computer systems,'' says Cap Gemini's Oliver.
Regardless of location, though, the efforts by companies, government agencies, and other organisations to make their computer systems fit for the next millennium will cost billions.
British Airways announced in July that it was spending £100 million on Y2K compliance and to ensure that after December 31, 1999, all its jetliners still fly safely and that ticket sales are uninterrupted. - DPA