This is for IT staff or those who have real inside knowledge. Has your company (or organisation) finished its own y2k remediation project successfully, including replacing all 3rd party softare and link testing with external partners. Furthermore are you confident with the outcome.

-- Richard Dale (rdale@figroup.co.uk), October 13, 1998

Answers

NB FI Group has not yet finished its internal y2k project, yet it has assisted Bank of Scotland with theirs.

-- Richard Dale (rdale@figroup.co.uk), October 13, 1998.

No: we still have some errors (in the Windows NT-CAD side) that are documented, but not fixed yet. Process seems to run okay as-is now on the Unix platforms. Don't know about "business-side"; we have had to complete surveys about our capabiliities for the banks we work with.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), October 13, 1998.

As a company of 1, me : ), I wear all hats! My Macs are compliant but I had to dump my Quicken software and the upgrade isn't in the budget. Not too sure about some other software I never use anyway. My graphics software is all compliant. Whew.

My worry is that my clients will be compliant. At this time, none of my clients have even become aware of Y2k. It's a catch 22 for me. Should I warn them and suffer a backlash or have them cut the advertising budget to fix their problems or do I continue to work with them and hope they "get it" eventually. My largest client is an association that represents technology driven businesses in the document systems industry. I really fear for them and what will happen when the dominos start to fall. ___________________________________________________________

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), October 13, 1998.

Of 58 applications running on our Main Frame, 15 are still not compliant. Legacy applications are still being remediated. This does not include our AIX, Novell or NT servers. This company (mid-sized), started their Y2K project in 1996. Not all hardware is compliant.

Since I am the project manager (on contract since June 1997) in charge of Y2K compliance for hardware and software, I track these things. When I brought up the 1300+ pc's running DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 (plus a few with Windows 98) I was told not to worry about it. I've personally tested a 133MHZ, 166MHZ and 200MHZ pc for RTC and Bios compliancy. The 133MHZ and 166MHZ failed. And we all know that Win 3.1X and Win95 is not compliant. Plus Win98 is now known to have a bug.

If this company stays in business it will be a minor miracle. IF they can get their hardware and software compliant they still have a problem with their suppliers from Asia. That is where they get 99% of their supplies.

-- Anna McKay Ginn (annaginn@aol.com), October 13, 1998.

I was given a "Y2K Warranty" to insert in each of the 15-or-so manuals that I maintain for our product (cable telephony). Just to make sure, I passed it by the corp atty & he said it's cool. Basically, we're on the hook to fix anything a customer finds before 2001. So our products are compliant anyway.

The suppliers (electric, payroll, water, maintenance) are the wild card. Not even Macs run w/o electricity. We've had a day w/o water here once, when the water main broke. Had to go traipsing into the woods to pee... I don't know how the women coped.

I think this company will survive Y2K, if anything does.

-- Larry Kollar (lekollar@nyx.net), October 13, 1998.

I am the senior programmer/analyst for a business that employes about 700 people. We are about 65 - 70% complete on our mainframe applications. I have been working full-time on Y2K for about 1 1/2 years. Management has made a decision to leave PC's up to the department in which they reside. Really stupid move as far as I can tell. This means that not one department has looked at or even thought about their PC's. From what I have heard, most departments plan to replace the problematic PC's. Of course this does nothing for the apps, custom spreadsheets, and the data. Basically their are clueless and IT will need to get involved, after being frozen out for over a year. Hell, we(IT) could have been done with the PC's by now.

I will fix the mainframe applications by Feb of 99 and then be gone in a puff of smoke. The PC issue will kill this place and IT will get the blame. I am not going to hang around to catch any of the fallout. I disagreed very strongly with the PC plan and almost left over it(I wish I would have).

I am very confident about the outcome of our mainframe applications. Actually they have be easy(tedious) to fix. Single point of storage and use. Legacy data conversion has been very time consuming but expansion is the only way to go in my book. I feel windowing is big mistake.

Our external data partners are a lost cause. We will scrub all data that enters our computers. I trust no one's data other than my own.

We have encountered our share of "gotchas" and I have spent far more time on this issue than anticipated.

If the power stays up and our suppliers can still get us the necessary materials, we will make it. Contingency planning for power and alt. suppliers has been another subject management just does not get. Oh well, I am tired of beating my head against the wall. Go with the flow and lets ride this monster(Y2K) till we finish or crash and burn.

I already have my contingency plans in place and could bug out on about 10 hr notice. I plan to improve on that number by making dry runs this winter and next spring.

yada

-- yada (yada@yada.com), October 13, 1998.

As a Y2k project manager for a very large multi-regional data center in beautiful Jax, FL (HOW ABOUT THEM JAGS!!) that has over 11 million lines of code, 2500+ PCs, and almost 2000+ additional pieces of hardware, I can safely say that we will make it in plenty of time. We ain't there yet, but we're getting very close. Our target date for compliancy (like most in the financial arena) is 12/31/1998, with additional testing to be accomplished in 1999. As of our last audit (and they seem to audit us about every month!) we were deemed 85% complete and received a very high rating. Don't worry folks, your mortgage payment will be handled just fine for many, many years to come (sorry!). The fact that we will be compliant, makes (roughly) 200 mortgage companies/banks (in the USA) compliant too.

-- deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), October 13, 1998.

I'm really confused. If we're the worriers, and those of us "in the know" are going to be compliant, I don't understand the problem. It's sounding pretty good from a layman's comprehension. Sorry, didn't write down the name of who wrote this, but, if you are going to be done, why will you be ready to bug out in 10 hours notice? Won't lots of other people be done? I'm truly confused.

-- margie mason (mar3mike@aol.com), October 13, 1998.

Margie - "Lots of" companies getting done is not enough by any means. Given the billions of dollars and millions of hours being spent, I'd be fairly surprised if the majority did not get done - they'd better! However, a majority isn't nearly enough in this case. If 30% or even 20% of all organizations miss the deadline and suffer Y2K-related failures, we will experience extremely serious disruptions.

Hence our friend's bug-out plan. The org he works for is a candidate for Darwinian selection. "Stupidity is the only capital crime in the universe." -- R. A. Heinlein

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.com), October 13, 1998.

I am a programmer working for a state govt on y2k. So far 275 systems have been made compliant. Work started in 1997. There are 430 more systems to go. The state has started fudging on their monthly status reports so that it looks like they are on schedule.

-- areseejay (areseejay@aol.com), October 13, 1998.

NO.

And guess what? I am now on the newly formed Y2K committee!!! Isn't that great! Seriously!

-- Buddy Y. (DC) (buddy@bellatlantic.net), October 13, 1998.

No. Management wants to replace a non-compliant AS400 system rather than upgrading current software to a compliant version. (The box and OS are OK.) They think everything will be fine, I have doubts. The schedule is too tight for me. We were hamstrung by the previous owners for over a year, as they negotiated the sale. This puts us in a tough spot.

Our situation seems to be the reverse of most, since PCs will be covered pretty well. 2/3 of the PCs will work with a date reset, the other 1/3 roll over OK. 2 units are still in question, but will be addressed. We have no custom desktop apps, and run only Win 95 and NT 4.0, along with AutoCAD 14, Genius 14, Mechanical Desktop, and MS Office 95 - all of which are compliant, or can be dealt with if we pay attention to all the details. I'm doing 99% of the PC work, and have recently gotten full backing of the new owners.

The shop floor has only a few machines to look at, and our HVAC isn't automated, other than one setback thermostat. Security system is still under assessment. Other misc. office equipment is all checking out OK.

I have high hopes for the new ownership, but if we start to take on water in 1999, this rat will jump ship. I've done my part.

-- anonymous (anon@not.com), October 13, 1998.

Margie

Your question holds both the answer and the problem: Assume (as is reasonable) that the people who read and post to this site are most aware (in their families, in their companies, and in their communities) of the y2K problems, and the myriad ways that a computer "glitch" winds its way through the systems they know and work with.

Most readers (based on the other answers in other threads) are related to programmers or computer developers/operators/techie types. (Figure it like talk radio or the editorial page, and assume only 1% send an answer for every 100 readers).

What's alarming is that those most closely associated with solving the problem, those most aware of its impact, and those who started earliest, are ONLY able to say (for the specific companies and programs they know intimately - so no BS filters from attorneys or politicians are being applied) that they "have more to do" and "may finish" in time to do an adequate job of testing.

Significantly, NO ONE who has studied the problem, or who has organized a remediation process, or who has managed an IT department has ever said "It wasn't needed" or "We found nothing" or "We finished early" or "We wasted our money" or "We finished all the tests in time and found nothing unexpected" or "There's to the Y2K problem."

So this small sample of professional users who know the real problems , who apparently started early than therest of the inductry (perhaps earlier than most of the rest of theworld) in trying to get these stupid machines to run haven't finished in their own companies. At best, most expect they will either finish (and be able to test) or "come close to finishing."

So where does that leave the "rest of the world"?

Not a happy place.

So were does that leave the

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), October 14, 1998.

My company has completed basic remediation. Most (85%) modifications are currently in production with the remainder expected to be there by February, 1999.

Last week we completed our first company-wide Y2K test. The test was a full rollover-style test (set the date to 12/31/1999 and let the systems run for two days.) Every system had it's full set of production processes run. Both batch and online transactions were processed. The only problems we encountered were due to problems in our testing methodology and not with Y2K problems in the systems. We plan at least four more such tests by the end of 1999, each longer and more detailed than the lasst.

-- Paul Neuhardt (neuhardt@ultranet.com), October 14, 1998.

I count 2 yes, 5 no, 3 no but "definitely will be", so far....

-- Richard Dale (rdale@figroup.co.uk), October 15, 1998.

No, we haven't finished, not even one. I work for a custom software supplier in a vertical market. One system is about to go into testing, 2 other major ones haven't begun, 10 more that we're "presumed" compliant haven't even been checked (ie, no inventory yet!).

Also, we just took on a client that expects us to replace their rather large system by 12/31/99 - no remediation plans for the existing system. This system drives their entire business.

How's that for some negative news! Remember the news on this site will be skewed to the positive because people tend to be more Y2K- aware.

-- Anonymous (no@mail.com), October 15, 1998.

To state govt, by my reckoning it should have now completed 430 with 275 to go not t'other way round. That is assuming effort averages out over systems. At this rate 155 systems will be non-compliant (ie about 22%). Wonder if non-compliant means they'll all fail completely. Will it be possible to suspend these systems in 2000 while they're being fixed (where necessary). Can you put every available prog. resource on system support.

-- Richard Dale (rdale@figroup.co.uk), October 19, 1998.