Most directors and managers have heard about the "millennium
time-bomb". Most believe that it is mainly a problem for older
data-processing systems that could fail at the end of the century when
the two-digit year moves from 99 to 00. They are wrong. Year 2000
problems span the entire business, from the factory floor to the
executive washroom and from the supply chain to product
liability. Many systems will fail long before the end of the
century. For most organisations, resolving their year 2000 issues will
either be the largest project they have ever undertaken successfully,
or the last they have the opportunity to attempt. The problems are
compounded by decades of poor software engineering, so that repairing
systems is unnecessarily expensive, time-consuming and error-prone.
There have been predictions that 10% of companies will go out of
business, and that unemployment will rise to 6 million in the UK, with
similar economic impact in other countries. Local authorities and
emergency services are starting to make plans to avoid civil
disorder. No-one knows how bad the disruption will be or how long it
will last, but the uncertainty itself could depress the capital
markets and cause economic damage.
Martyn Thomas has worked with major companies around the world on
their Year 2000 programmes. In this talk he describes what he has
seen, and attempts to draw some conclusions.
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