Re: Y2K- how much is necessary

Waw,

In a message dated 98-02-12 12:22:50 EST, you write:

> Y2K food for thought:
>        As all companies are doing, we are evaluating what to do for the year
>  Y2K.  We are looking at updating our software to a higher version that
>  supports 2000, or buying a tool that will convert our existing software. 
>  Both are VERY expensive.  We are a company that runs Jan-Dec,  we do not
>  need all this info from previous years ( it is on history, but on a day to
>  day basis we deal with what is happening now).  Our planning program will
>  have to be adjusted, and credit aging, so show the correct 90 period for
>  whats outstanding shows.  However we can not see a big panic over any other
>  levels.  We have already tried, and we can enter orders, ship, receive.  So
>  my bottom line question is why not just change those applications that
>  absolutely have to be changed to work, and "ride out" the rest of the
>  programs.  I realize we need to do some heavy duty testing to verify that
>  we are not being naive.  But has any one else been contemplating to very
>  little conversion, and skipping that huge payment to a company to convert
>  them.

While your approach is valid, not many are choosing it due to liability
concerns.  If a company were to fail in its delivery obligations to a
customer, a lawyer could say something like "well, _these_ systems aren't Y2K
compliant, how do we know that the rest of them are?".  Your heavy testing
should include whether or not your leap year calculations work into the next
millenium.

Many companies are just putting all new development on hold, so that the in-
house staff can do the conversion instead of making that "huge payment".
However, depending upon your customer performance arrangements, "after the
fact" evaluation of your conversion by a third party may _still_ be a good
idea.  Even if you only do a partial conversion, you should be _WELL_ beyond
the planning stage at this point unless you have a _VERY_ small application.

IMHO,

Dean Asmussen
Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc.
Fuquay-Varina, NC  USA
E-Mail:  DAsmussen@aol.com

"If your friend won't lend you fifty dollars, he's probably a close friend."
-- Anonymous
+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to "MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com".
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---