isham research
(Didn't happen, as it turned out.)
(Unavoidably, during this discussion, the year 2000 will have to be mentioned. It will be referred to as 'Y2000', since using abbreviations to save two characters is what got us into this mess in the first place. But see the bottom of the page.)
Lots of observers expect corporate IT operations to enter a frozen period in 2H1999, with all forms of upgrade, migration, etc., utterly forbidden. In early discussions, The Gartner Group is even supposed to have referred to "Nuclear Winter".
Anecdotal evidence predicts major upheavals. Perhaps, in industry as a whole, there will be. Certainly non-compliant personal computers are still being sold in the UK. How relevant is this to the disciplined corporate IT environment? Probably not very.
The Y2000 issue has been used as a "Get out of Jail Free" card by beleaguered CIOs for years. But in boardrooms around the world, senior executives are turning to CIOs and asking: "Are we ready or not?" An affirmative answer is essential at this point - and it will be followed by: "What about this application backlog?"
It's a simple issue. Can a company that has completed its Y2000 preparations afford the luxury of sitting on its hands until March 2000 - or will it wish to exploit its readiness for competitive advantage?
It's important to avoid being swept along by common perceptions of the problem. The disciplined corporate IT environment has been preparing for this for years (the first memo I saw on the subject was in 1972) and is much better prepared than the SOHO business. Stories do exist (and are true) about mainframe sites that are only just starting - but these are moribund and should long since have converted to mid-range or smaller systems.
IBM's announcements are prudent - they allow sites that anticipate having a 'lockdown' imposed by external management to prepare nevertheless for unexpected growth and meet it with non-disruptive upgrades. If the expected mass adoption of e-commerce happens, no one will wish their organisation to hit capacity constraints. Planning for this through to early 2000AD makes a great deal of sense. Although their offering was not so well packaged, it's fair to point out that Amdahl got there first with the Dynamic QuickCapacity feature on the Millennium 700.
Actually, quite a bit of the blame for the Y2000 problem belongs with the humble punch operators of the late 1960 and 1970s. They were paid by the number of items they processed - just imagine standing up in a punchroom and telling them all to add two key depressions to every date because you expected global meltdown thirty years in the future. Four extra key depressions per transaction? In the punch room I knew, you might have escaped alive but not fully clothed.