Millennium Bug May Bite the
Unprepared in the Wallet
PacificBusiness News, Commentary, by Ned Dana, 22 September 1997.(Honolulu)
There is an impending problem that is real and serious -- estimated
to cost between $600 billion and $1.5 trillion. It will affect
you. Many businesses could fail, and if your company has not addressed
the problem, it should start to immediately. It might already
be too late.
What's the problem?
Much has been written on the problem, but not enough is being
done to resolve it. Referred to as the "Millennium Bug," the "Year
2000 Problem," or "Y2K," it is the biggest issue the computer
industry has ever faced. The problem actually is very simple,
although it's complicated to fix. It primarily occurs when dates
are compared or subtracted. The reason is that we commonly represent
dates with two digits, rather than four digits. For instance,
"1997" is represented as "97," dropping the first two numbers
of the date. When the year 2000 arrives, mis-programmed computers
will interpret "00" as the year 1900.
Why was this simple thing done incorrectly? To understand, you
need to look back to the 1960s and 1970s when the computer software
that runs our large organizations was just beginning to be produced.
Memory was hundreds of thousands of times more costly than it
is today. Programmers addressed this problem by squeezing every
possible byte of computer storage out of a program, including
shortening years from four characters to two. They didn't anticipate
a problem because they thought that the software being used would
be discarded by the year 2000. However, rather than replacing
old software with new software, in most cases programs were added
to and extended. The basis of much software today used in large
corporations and institutions is still what was written several
decades ago.
Now that we know how we got into this predicament, here are some
specific examples of how we might be affected by the Year 2000
problem:
The 99-year phone call.
Imagine you begin a phone call with your friend at 11:58 p.m.
on Dec. 31, 1999 about the change of the millennium, and you keep
talking for a few minutes into the new millennium. If the phone
company's computer systems don't compute this correctly, you could
be billed for a 99-year phone call--that's 63 million minutes.
Imagine what that'll do to your phone bill.
The 95-year-old Spam.
The problem already has begun to affect some businesses. One major
food processing company ran into trouble in 1995 when a computerized
inventory control system checked the expiration dates of products
in its warehouse. Food with a five-year shelf life had been given
an expiration date of "00." The computer interpreted this year
as 1900, concluded that the food had expired 95 years before,
and ordered it discarded. Fortunately, the company still used
people, not robots, in its warehouse. They realized what had gone
wrong and the food was saved.
The Year 2000 fix--two approaches.
Each affected application either will need to be repaired or replaced.
There are advantages and disadvantages for each. If you decide
to repair the application, all locations in the application that
refer to years using two digits instead of four need to be located
and there is no easy way to do this. Automated tools can reduce
the overall effort by 20 to 30 percent at best. It might sound
simple to fix two digits, but there are literally hundreds of
applications that will need to be checked. The other option is
to replace the program, which is likely to be more costly and
time-consuming, but yields a better more modern system. At this
point, if replacement hasn't started, it's probably too late and
the only option is to repair the applications temporarily, until
they can be replaced.
Steps in solving the problem.
It's critical that the problem first be addressed on a business
enterprise level--it's not just an information systems department
problem anymore. To make sure that you cover all your bases, it
will be necessary to create a steering committee that laterally
cuts across the entire organization, including users, executives,
programmers, everyone--every department. All software and data
stores will need to be inventoried: source code, object code,
compilers, operating systems, utilities, files, archives, third-party
applications, and interfaces to other enterprises. You will need
to conduct risk assessment exercises in order to create a statement
of impact. Then you will need to plan and pick an approach (repair
or replace) for each application affected, choose the proper tools
to help implement the changes, and test, and test, and test! Experts
recommend at least one year of testing.
Legal issues.
How many $600 billion social problems have been resolved without
copious litigation? It is estimated that the cost of litigation
may well exceed the costs of fixing the problem. If, for example,
you insure a company that is doing nothing about the Year 2000
Problem, how can you say you showed due diligence in writing insurance
for that party? The legal ramifications are staggering.
One of the most perplexing aspects of the millennium bug is the
fact that no one really knows what will happen. There is no clear
idea of how far the problem will reach into your organization,
and how it will affect business. Virtually every state, government,
and municipality, as well as every large, mid-size and small business
in the world, is going to have to deal with this problem. As Peter
de Jager, a well-known Y2K expert, said to a group of programmers
and IS managers last year: "If you're sleeping well at night,
you don't understand the problem."
Ned Dana is president and principal consultant of Rare & Dear,
Inc., a Kauai-based software company with special emphasis on
Oracle database development and management.
