Wednesday September 1 8:21 AM ET

A Y2K Bug For Rivals Could Prove A Boon For Firms

By Narayanan Madhavan

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - If your company is prepared to meet the Y2K bug, but your competitor is not, it could be a valuable business opportunity, the president of Microsoft Corp's (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) Indian subsidiary said Wednesday.

``You should also have a contingency plan for success,'' Rajiv Nair told businessmen at a conference on the Year 2000 (Y2K) problem in computers organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry.

The Year 2000 bug can affect old-generation computers that denoted years only by their last two digits in their date fields. Unless corrected, this can cause data crashes when the next year starts.

With less than four months for the new year to dawn, Nair warned of possible problems companies could face in the coming 122 days as they readied to face any problem that the bug could cause trouble in their systems.

He said a shortage of computer programmers proficient in Y2K solutions could be one contingency. ``As you grow close to the millennium, these programmers are going to be sucked up.''

Ravi Rajan, vice-president, information technology, at Citibank N.A., told the conference that companies also had to guard against ``Y2K fatigue'' among its experts, who could burn out as the work burden increased closer to D-Day.

``It is important that in the next 122 days you don't break down... Y2K fatigue has to be carried on... at least till the end of January,'' he said.

Pundits also advised companies to light fires under their chief executives so that they would move fast to tackle any problem related to the Millennium Bug but go easy on programmers.

``At the CEO (level) you need to create panic, but to the programmer,... give support. This is the time to do it,'' said Rajendra Pawar, managing director of software education firm, NIIT Ltd .

Nair asked firms to be ready to face possible hardware shortages as sudden demands to replace old systems could dry up inventories in companies that sell computers.

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Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), September 01, 1999