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This June 30 story in COMMUNICATIONS WEEK discusses the anomaly of two of the most famous mainframe companies in the y2k repair field: they are not 2000-compliant themselves. They are both licensing other vendors' software to fix their own date problem.
"The fact that the mainframe's inventor and its chief promulgator are looking outside their own walls for Year 2000 expertise is an indication that although demand for these solutions is going through the roof, the supply of resources is nearing rock bottom, experts said." . . .
"Only about 20 percent of companies have done much about the Year 2000 problem, which means that about 80 percent haven't done anything," says Allen Gart, vice president of SEEC, Pittsburg." SEEC, Inc. is the firm that sold IBM its software.
My assessment: if it's so easy to fix y2k, why is it that IBM and EDS haven't done it? IBM and EDS have known from the beginning of the business that the problem was there. Why did they wait so long? And if they need help to fix it, what are the options of businesses that are not run by mainframe experts? What happens when the 80% that do need to be fixed go out to hire programmers? Where will they find them? At what price?
These are hypothetical questions. They won't bother. It will be an impossibility. Why pay to do what cannot be done? So, they will just sit there until their systems crash.
Will you also sit there until their systems crash?
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