Computer consultants busy handling Y2K glitches

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Grassroots Information Coordination Center (GICC) : One Thread

Computer consultants busy handling Y2K glitches and new business

Peter Sinton, Chronicle Senior Writer

Wednesday, January 12, 2000

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Mark Griffin of San Francisco's Automatic Garage Door Corp. used the Y2K scare not just to patch his company's computer systems but to entirely replace them.

Like many other small-business owners, Griffin unfortunately waited a tad too long. When he finally got around to overhauling his 5-year-old computer system just two days before New Year's with $20,000 worth of new Dell PCs, a Microsoft NT server and other gear, there wasn't enough time to completely check out all systems.

Last week, Automatic Garage had to call Burr, Pilger & Mayer Computer Consulting Services for help after it opened for business for the first time this year. Its check-writing and accounts payable functions didn't work.

More than a few other small businesses suffered similar high-tech hangovers. After doing absolutely nothing to prepare for Y2K, Osaka Sushi in Davis reopened for business on January 2 to find its aging Sable Technology computer system acting like a dead fish.

The server was stuck on March 27, 1972, and refused to take food orders or accept credit cards. Owner Alan Vu whipped out his trusty calculator to compute bills and changed the restaurant's policy to accept checks instead of cards. He also quickly ordered a new $3,089 Sable server.

During this past year, U.S. businesses and government agencies spent an estimated $100 billion to $150 billion on hardware, software and labor to assess, repair and test their computer systems for Y2K glitches. That was a small but significant part of the total $862 billion that Gartner Group of Stamford, Conn., figures was spent in North America last year on telecommunications, hardware, software and services.

``We have a buy-and-scrap mentality, and Y2K was a great excuse for companies to upgrade their computers,'' said Gartner research director Dale Vecchio. ``The byproduct of Y2K remediation was a lot of down payments on information technology infrastructure improvements.''

Although some consultants who specialized in rewriting computer code to cope with Y2K have lost business, most computer consultants see no shortage of customers.

``We're still getting some calls about Y2K,'' said Jeffrey Pascone, director of Burr, Pilger & Mayer's computer services. ``A lot of people pulled the trigger late in the game.''

His firm recently replaced 15 full computer systems that were so far out of compliance that it was easier and more cost-effective to junk them than to fix them.

~ snip ~

See entire article at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/01/12/BU49181.DTL -----------------------------------------------

Source: San Francisco Chronicle page D1

-- Lee Maloney (leemaloney@hotmail.com), January 12, 2000


Moderation questions? read the FAQ