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Infoliant Corporation on Y2K: We Are Moving in the Wrong Direction; Highest-Ever Percentage of `Negative' Changes Recorded

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- As a striking follow up to the huge spike in Y2K compliance status changes recorded in August, Infoliant Corporation announced today that two-thirds (66%) of the status changes tracked by the Year 2000 Network Advisor(TM) knowledgebase in September were "negative." The Year 2000 Network Advisor maintains Y2K compliance information on more than 40,000 hardware and software products for enterprise, network and desktop systems. Infoliant tracks these products daily and provides updated compliance information to its customers. Infoliant's Compliance Tracker(TM) Delta Report is released monthly as a compilation of the status changes recorded for the previous month. In September, Infoliant tracked changes to the Y2K compliance status of 246 products. That number compares to just 125 as recently as July.

"The high percentage of `negative' changes this month was unexpected. With fewer than 100 days until the new millennium, we would expect manufacturers of information technology (IT) products to be wrapping up their Y2K testing and certification processes," says Kevin Weaver, vice president and co-founder of Infoliant. "Instead, we tracked 86 products that went from the `compliant' category to either `action required,' `vendor will not test,' `pending evaluation,' or `non-compliant'; and another 74 products made similar `negative' moves. These findings further stress that Y2K remediation is an ongoing process that necessitates continued vigilance by Year 2000 project teams charged with the remediation and clean management of third-party products."

Some details of September's Compliance Tracker Delta Report:

-- Y2K compliance status changes were tracked for 246 IT products -- Two-thirds (66 percent) of the changes in September were "negative" -- Only 20 percent of the changes were the result of a product being declared "compliant" by the manufacturer -- Important updates, patches, and revisions were issued for more than 150 other products with previously published Y2K issues

Infoliant uses a dedicated research staff and proprietary agent technology to monitor the compliance status of more than 40,000 products from 750-plus manufacturers stored in its Year 2000 Network Advisor(TM) knowledgebase, the leading resource for Y2K readiness information of off-the-shelf information technology products. The database tracks product compliance, reports when corrective action is required and indicates if the manufacturer is no longer supporting the product. The information is published online for customer access and download.

Many companies utilize Infoliant's Millennium Direct Edition, which creates a mirrored version of the online database on the customer's internal network, in either Lotus Domino or Microsoft Access formats.

Customers can also subscribe to Infoliant's Compliance Tracker(TM) service, which sends automatic E-mail notification when the Y2K status of a product in a customer's portfolio changes. By using Infoliant's subscription-based service,corporations can focus their IT staffs on more strategic, mission-critical applications that require more time to understand and remediate. Infoliant's customers include dozens of Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and hundreds of other organizations worldwide.

SOURCE Infoliant Corporation

-- Uncle Bob (UNCLB0B@Y2KOK.ORG), October 11, 1999

Answers

I'll bet this information never makes the nightly news.

-- cody (cody@y2ksurvive.com), October 11, 1999.

BBWWWAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

The DOWNSLIDE has Started!

Will civilization devolutionize beyond Infomagic?

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), October 11, 1999.

We are nearing a major milestone. All projects will now begin providing true status. Senior management in many places will begin to receive some surprising and very bad news.

And so it goes...

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.hid), October 11, 1999.

Hmmmm, amazing. A software/hardware project behind schedule? Nationwide? With a fixed deadline? No way! It's all a lie. Bubba's people told us we'll be ok....

Oh, and by the way, I'm ready for the 9.0...at the end of this month, at this pace though, I might be Milne/North/Infomagic 10.0.....

Have a nice day,John

-- John Galt (jgaltfla@hotmail.com), October 11, 1999.

Interesting that the recent Yardeni/CIO poll found that approximately half of the largest corporations in america did not expect to complete their mission critical systems by the end of this year.

Now, (for those who understand these things) here's the bad news:

The poll was conducted by interviewing TOP MANAGEMENT.

Even AFTER most of the bad news has been filtered out, the results still look bleak.

-- Me (me@me.me), October 11, 1999.

Thanks Uncle Bob.

Pffftttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I smell smoke.

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I'll repeat what I said earlier:

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I wonder what spin the CHURCH OF POLLYOLOGY will give this?

And of course there will be many more articles LIKE THIS ONE, soon enough.

///

-- no talking please (breadlines@soupkitchen.gov), October 11, 1999.

Hey guys,

Guess what made CNN's Moneyline? Nah, you wouldn't believe it, because I don't believe my ears!

-- me (me@me.com), October 11, 1999.

Psssssssssssssss! Pssssssssssssss! OK folks there goes the Polly-Off.

-- a (a@a.a), October 11, 1999.

Interesting. They "monitor" 40,000 products, but they "track" 246. I wonder what the difference is between monitoring and tracking? I wonder how they select *which* 246?

Is it permissable to notice that Infoliant sells a service which becomes moot when compliance is reached? Or should we regard outfits that make money selling bad news as neutral and objective?

Just curious.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), October 11, 1999.

No flint-boy, you are not curious. You are just being an ASSHOLE again. It is utterly inapparopriate to say that if a company makes money there is something wrong if the news is bad, necessarily.

It is the feeble resort of those with no facts or evidence at their disposal or anything meaningful to say.

-- Paul Milne (fedinfo@halifax.com), October 11, 1999.

Oh Flint... you're so... predictable!

I swear you run with an automatic timer attached at the hip.

;-D

This could be an "interesting" research project if somebody wants to take it on. (I'm stacked up with other's right now).

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), October 11, 1999.

Paul:

That's a fascinating comment coming from someone who always declares good news to be bogus if it's financially motivated. I guess the shoe doesn't fit right on the other foot? Why am I not surprised?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), October 11, 1999.

If all Infoliant sells is news (as described above), it's hard to see how they could have a financial interest in the direction of the news. What am I missing here?

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), October 11, 1999.

If things were really on track to be complete at year end, there would be few negative changes...but for there to be this many, things are going downhill fast.

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), October 13, 1999.