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By Stephanie Neil

November 5, 1999 1:13 PM ET

For most, Y2K has been no game.

It has been a big drain on IT budgets. It has forced the hand of many executives to spend a lot of money on a project they know won't help the company profit.

And even though there's been no proof that business systems will fall apart due to Y2K-related anomalies, if money and time didn't go toward remediation and testing, cynical stockholders, customers and business partners would abandon ship -- fast. And then business would stop, regardless of whether Y2K caused problems or not.

CIO and CEOs really have been pushed into a corner on this one. Marketing hype and doomsday predictions caused everyone to cast a wary eye on IT. As a result, even if Y2K is the ultimate sham, every company had to be a party to it and play the game, so to speak.

For others, however, namely Y2K vendors and consultants, it's been a profitable game whereby products and services were sold by playing upon IT's vulnerabilities. Nobody knows for sure what will happen, but for vendors and consultants, lack of knowledge rings like a cash register in their ears.

Now we're nearing the end of the year. Y2K budgets are slim. So as soon as it looked as if IT's Y2K money well went dry, these so-called Y2K pundits packed up their things and moved on to the next profitable project: e-business. So, I wonder, has this all been a big game?

We could compare Y2K strategy to any fast-moving game. Everyone's on a different team, each with its own strategy for winning. For IT, winning means completing remediation quickly, getting through Y2K without much disruption -- and still having a job at the end of it all.

For vendors and consultants, it's all been about making money, mowing over anyone in their way, like a hockey player slamming the opposing player into the boards. And that has come about by having the upper hand (or, in hockey terms, a power play). For the last few years, IT has been, in theory, one man short. Not because of the labor shortage, but because they've lacked some important knowledge when it comes to what Y2K means to the enterprise. Vendors and Y2K experts have taken advantage of that, in some regard.

Suspicious minds

I began to question people's motives while reporting a story recently for which I needed to speak with a Y2K analyst. It seems that many Y2K consultant practices have "shrunk." Many don't even practice anymore. When I asked an analyst -- who is described as a Y2K expert in his bio -- why he couldn't talk about the issues, his response was that his company, which shall remain nameless, decided to drop Y2K analysis because it was no longer profitable.

Then there are the system integrators I spoke to who have already transformed their Y2K services into e-commerce services. And what about the vendors, all looking to the future and quickly repositioning their Y2K software as "asset management" software.

That's fine for them, but what about all those CIOs they've left hanging? It's not over for IT, and it won't be even after January 1. Companies will still have to dedicate staff to Y2K through leap year issues, through the first quarter of the fiscal year, and until all the shareholders, customers and business partners say they are convinced Y2K is a thing of the past.

The one thing that could temper the frustration IT might be feeling right about now is that they are now in control. For the first time, IT knows everything about the company's business systems: how they integrate, where they impact business, what data is stored there. Which means that, in the future, they will never again have to be in the position of relying on vendors and consultants to lead the way or giving in to demands made by outsiders.

That's because knowledge, in this case, is truly the ultimate power play.

What do you think? Is Y2K a bigger scam than it is a problem? Write me at stephanie_neil@zd.com. Off the Cuff, an online exclusive column, appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

-- y2k dave (xsdaa111@hotmail.com), November 11, 1999

Answers

Going long! I'm open! To me! To me!

Too late to fix it, to early to apportion blame: if nothing goes wrong to me or mine, I'll be the first to raise a glass to Mr John Major and Mr Tony Blair.

-- Colin MacDonald (roborogerborg@yahoo.com), November 11, 1999.

we'll see who has scammed who very shortly
methinks we're all screwed

-- sinking feeling (Titanic@iceberg.degree), November 11, 1999.