Re: Y2K compliance info on SSA

Sharon.Redknap@outokumpu.com writes

>  I have been asked by our external auditors to provide written statements
>  from our various software suppliers to confirm that systems are Y2K
>  compliant.

I too have been interested in such questions regarding IBM SSA & the various
peripherals attached to our system

http://www.itaa.org

This organization, for a price, will CERTIFY that a company & its products are
ready for the 21st century, and for free you can download various check lists
& guidance on what any organization ought to be doing.  It is a voluntary
AUDIT of information provided by the company, very similar conceptually to ISO
certification.  In theory, a company goes through this process to verify that
they have not overlooked anything.  The last time I checked the site, many of
SSA's competitors had done it but not SSA.  The really scary thing about this
place is how few organizations in the world have been willing to subject
themselves to an outside audit to prove Y2K compliance.

Several industry leaders, such as IBM, 3M, big 3 auto, have been conducting
similar audits of their industry entire supply chain, but many internet sites
have blanket statements "Trust Us" we are ready, with no basis of reliability
of these statements, much like marketing claims.

http://www.aiag.org      AIAG.ORG (an automotive association) info indicates
that contemporary new cars should be Y2K compliant - I had been holding off on
replacing my 10 year old Honda, because I could not get authoritative
information on the embedded chip issue --- there's a lot of web sites that act
as if business as usual does not include telling consumers what their Y2K
status is.

For Y2K questions of IBM I have found an excellent place to start 
http://www.as400service.ibm.com/as400/y2k.html

for future Y2K questions, ask year2000@us.ibm.com
or in your UK case e-mail at y2ktsc4@vnet.ibm.com. 
there may be a better place, but they should forward for you

If you would like more - I can share scores of URLs with respect to IBM AS/400
Y2K readiness - now if I could only extract the data I have been struggling
with like

http://wwwyr2k.raleigh.ibm.com = site for info on peripherals & modems & etc.
- I am getting hits for our equipment, but can't figure out how to fill in the
blankety blank session blank

Sometimes external auditors & lawyers don't care if we will survive or not,
they just want statements from suppliers & vendors so that if anything goes
wrong, we won't be held liable because we can prove that someone else lied to
us.  If you want that kind of statement, I suggest checking with SSA marketing
- I would not be surprised if they have some kind of statement in lists of
features that claims this product or that one is Y2K compliant.

Your UK regulations may differ from those in the USA, so your Y2K surfing
might include

http://www.iee.org.uk/2000risk/   = British Definitions of Embedded Risks

Also check out whatever you can find on Greenwich Mean Time.  This is a UK
firm that tested something of the order of 500 different combinations of PC
brands models & years of manufacture, producing statistics on which had Y2K
problems as of year of manufacture & non-compliant were still being
manufactured as recently as 1998.  They also tested something like 5,000
software packages & ranked what proportions had Y2K problems & also measured
TRUTH - i.e. of those products that were not Y2K compliant, what percentage of
their suppliers claimed that they were?  It was pretty high, demonstrating
that we cannot rely on a supplier unsubstantiated claims.

I have managed to misplace the URL where IBM had something similar.
50,000 products for AS/400 USED to be able to market with the label IBM
solution, until they had to be able to prove to IBM that they were Y2K
compliant - 500 products survived that effort - this data came to me from the
gossip section of one of the AS/400 trade publications.

My interest is in determining what stuff needs to be replaced or upgraded, on
the path to MIS having a minimal disruption, and telling management what I
expect of other departments so that our employer can remain in business.  For
that, it is ultimately every company's responsibility to TEST TEST TEST & have
some policy in place, so that we do not re-introduce Y2K-vulnerabilities.

Al Macintyre
Central Industries
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