End of the World As We Know It

What will happen to your computer when the year 2000 is ushered in. Experts tell what to look for.

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To hear alarmists tell it, "the century crisis" might mean the end of civilization as we know it. If computer systems are not reprogrammed to recognize the year 2000, the pied pipers of doom warn, planes taking off at midnight, December 31, 1999, are likely to crash. Traffic signals could go haywire, causing gridlock and car wrecks. Cash machines might jam up, mighty corporations could go bankrupt, and convicted felons could escape from jail.

But in this foreboded disaster lies a market of opportunities. It will require $300 billion to $600 billion to assess and fix the computer problems associated with the year 2000, estimates the GartnerGroup, a Stamford, Conn., consulting firm. "People put out such high cost estimates," says Gregory Gieber, a computer-services analyst at investment firm Smith Barney Inc., "because every line of computer code has to be reviewed."

Command Systems Inc., a Farmington, Conn., computer-consulting company, is poised to seize the market opportunities. Edward Caputo started the company on a shoestring about a decade ago, and this year its sales are expected to hit $35 million, more than double last year's $17 million. Now specializing in Y2K work (as it's called in technospeak), Caputo's operation has signed up a passel of premier insurance companies, including Boston Mutual Life Insurance Co., Liberty Mutual Group, New York Life Insurance Co., and ITT Hartford, as clients. Clearly, it's the fin de siÈcle work that accounts for much of Command Systems' expansion, but Caputo is also laying the groundwork to land postmillennium contracts to wire insurance companies to their agents and customers.

No one knows precisely how many entrepreneurs have formed businesses in recent months to meet what is by all accounts outsized demand. But, says Lynn Edelson, a computer-assurance partner at Coopers & Lybrand in Los Angeles, "at almost every seminar and conference I've done on the year 2000 problem, there is somebody in the audience who used to be at a big company who is now specializing in year 2000 work."

Jim Porter, managing director of Harvard, Porter & Associates, in Dallas, was formerly an information-systems executive at ARCO. He took early retirement from the oil company in 1994 and got his first computer-consulting contract in June 1995. By year-end 1996, Harvard, Porter, which specializes in Y2K assessments, planning, and project management, had $1.9 million in sales, 14 professionals on staff, 45 clients--including several major energy companies--and at least three buyout offers from bigger companies. Most of Porter's full-time project managers are former colleagues, many of whom he has lured out of retirement with salaries of $100,000 a year.

Small companies with proven expertise and better pricing can beat out bigger competitors. Jason Yi, president of BlackHawk Information Services, a 21-person technology company in Danville, Calif., startled the Y2K world when he snared the Apple Computer account. He says that he wrote a scanning tool to locate date-related fields within Apple's in-house manufacturing application himself. Yi figures that with a two-year price tag of $5,000, his project will save Apple about 50% of what it would have spent for a bigger competitor to do the job.

But small companies still remain at a disadvantage against more established competitors because small businesses are harder to sue if something goes wrong, notes Stephanie Moore, a senior analyst at Giga Information Group, in Westport, Conn. Never mind the half-trillion-dollar estimate on the cost of repairing the Y2K problem; watch out for the lawyers. "I've heard figures as high as $1 trillion for the cost of litigation and damages," says Moore.

Resources

One of the by-products of the year 2000 computer hoopla (known as Y2K by the insiders) is the slew of articles, books, software, and experts that have sprung up to help you and your money part company. If you're looking for one practical, no-nonsense guide to figuring out if you have a problem and then, if you do, getting it fixed, consider Solving the Year 2000 Problem (AP Professional, 800-321-5068, 1997, $27.95) . It's written by Jim Keogh, who spent years solving technology problems for investment-banking firms on Wall Street and also served as an editor at Popular Electronics and Personal Computer magazines. His advice is refreshingly practical and jargon free. Want to do a simple test to see if you have a Y2K problem? Disconnect your personal computer from your local area network, back up all the systems stored on your personal computer, and then follow these pearls of advice from chapter 5, "Solutions, Testing, and Implementation":

• Set your system's clock to 23:55. This is five minutes before midnight.
  
• Set the date on your system to December 31, 1999.
  
• Turn off your computer for about five minutes.
  
• Turn on your computer.
  
• Check the date on your computer. This should be January 1, 2000.

"All the systems running on your personal computer should react as if the year 2000 bug has struck," Keogh writes. "If your computer system's clock does not show the correct date, then you know that you must upgrade your hardware because all the systems running on the computer will be using an inaccurate date."

BLACKHAWK INFORMATION SERVICES, Jason Yi, P.O. Box 1897, Danville, CA 94526; 510-244-6701 29

COMMAND SYSTEMS, Edward Caputo, Pond View Corporate Center, 76 Batterson Park Rd., Farmington, CT 06032; 860-409-2000 29

GARTNERGROUP, 56 Top Gallant Rd., Stamford, CT 06902; 203-964-0096 29

GIGA INFORMATION GROUP, Stephanie Moore, 125 Main St., Westport, CT 06880; 203-221-8962 29

HARVARD, PORTER & ASSOCIATES, Jim Porter, 12300 Ford Rd., Suite 450, Dallas, TX 75234; 972-488-8401 29