| Chaos in the Year 2000 |
Introduction
Over the last year it has been hard not to notice the increasing volume in which various prominent members of the IT community, as well as government bodies, have been warning businesses about an impending disaster that could strike at the turn of the millenium, costing as much as 400 billion UK pounds on a global scale. This article will discuss what it is, how it can affect small businesses and suggests a five point action plan which can save your business from the Year 2000 problem.
The Millenium Timebomb: An Overview
Computer programmers have always been under pressure to produce solutions which use up as little memory and storage space as possible. This requirement was most prominent back in the 1970s and 1980s when disk storage was significantly more expensive, and one of the ways they were able to satisfy this requirement was by expressing dates as two digits (hence 1997 would be converted to 97). The problem with doing this is that it means that the year 2001 will be translated to 01, which may result in inaccurate calculations.Resolving the problem is not an easy task - many of the bugged programs go back decades, even to the 1960s when people thought that their systems were unlikely to be used even today; to correct the programs, code relating to dates have to be sought out, and then adjusted and tested. However a lot of the old code may be badly documented and futhermore, it may be difficult to find the original programmers!
So How Can it Affect the Small Business?
It is possible that the Year 2000 problem can affect your business in one of the following ways.- business schedules/diaries held on computer
- sell-by-dates for consumables (for example, groceries, laser toner cartridges)
- databases (especially those relying on chronologically ordered data)
- finance and financial reporting packages
- operating systems utilities (such as backup software, anti-virus software)
- in-house macro programs/mini applications (for which the Year 2000 rollover was never on the mind of the programmer, and may have been written without any in-program commenting to ease debugging)
Hence it is possible for you to be affected without even realising it, and this is compounded by the fact that you may not even know how it has affected you even after the problem has started until you come to rely on a piece of information being accurate, with potentially disastrous consequences.
Five Point Action Plan
(Note: this may not necessarily steer you clear of the problem, and you are advised to consult with an expert in the up-coming problem.)- Draw up a plan that gets commitment from the managers of the business and creates an awareness among staff, who may determine that software they use regularly is likely to fail.
- Review the hardware - use mbug software (for the PC); this may require replacement of the motherboard if the bug is discovered.
- Review software, checking that it all relies on 4 digits years for date calculations; you may require the services of a computer consultant who has an appreciation of the year 2000 problem.
- Review in-house software; you may also require the services of a programmer to decipher the code; this also includes making sure that staff do not continue to code macros that will suffer from the millenium bug!
- Upgrade or replace any hardware that threatens to fail come the rollover; contact consultant programmers regarding fixing any in-house software; contact software manufacturers regarding any Year 2000 problems which you suspect may arise from the use of their software (they may have upgrades available).
Conclusion
As you can see, despite the hype over the last few months, the Millenium Bug can be a real problem even for the small business, but with a solution worked into the overall strategy of the organisation, it need not end in disaster.
Appendix 1 - Sites Worth Viewing
Year 2k - http://www.cio.com/forums/year2k.htmlYear 2000 - http://www.year2000.com/
Appendix 2 - Downloading Software to Test Your PC's BIOS
This software test consists of two files: jdmbug.exe and testmbug.bat.
The following steps will help in testing your PC: (You may need to refer to your user guide/manual for details on how to carry out each step.)
- Create a subdirectory on your harddisk called "mbug".
- Select each of the links above and save the files in the mbug directory. (You may have to right-click on the link and select the "save as..." option.)
- In MS-DOS, change directory to mbug and type "testmbug.bat" to run the software.
Copyright (C) 1996 IRL