What is the issue about the Millenium? It is more than an IT issue, it is a strategic business issue to ensure that all transactions which take place within and external to a company - and also within and external to a country, have the desired end effect. Business survival depends not only on hardware, data, software and applications, it depends on a company`s supply chain, general infrastructure and market confidence. Globally, Gartner Group has estimated the cost of the "Millenium Bug" to be US$6 Billion. Every developed nation has a project in place and is in varied states of readiness. Deutsche Morgen Grenfell are predicting the odds of a Global recession are raised to 60%, Real GDP could fall 4% in the US and the recession could begin in the 2nd half of 1999. (It could be the first recession to be on time). In terms of readiness, only USA and Australia count themselves out in front, with the UK, Israel and Canada 3 months behind. South Africa is well placed at only 6 months behind, along with Japan. The rest stagger along with increasing lateness. The Department of Communications under Jay Naidoo has announced a comprehensive program to support South Africa through to the 21st Century. A top team covering each Industry Sector is now in place, and will be supporting and monitoring the National effort to minimise the effects and support the strategy. Figures, regarding the correction or replacement schedules and costs thereof, for the "embedded" systems - those chips which are hard coded and perform some singular task as part of an electrical system, or down a mine, or part of a telecommunications system, have not been forthcoming - both in South Africa and internationally. Getting Y2K ready means working through a Process of Assessment - what must be done, of detailed analysis and planning and of course of implementation, of changes and of testing. This is not a short process, and skills unfortunately in South Africa are in short supply. The Government will be compiling lists of consultants who will be competent in these areas and companies may well wish to take professional advice or assistance in the areas of risk management, auditing of readiness and in resource. Although industry has to assess the impact of embedded chips malfunctioning in all lines of both production (including support and maintenance), supply and distribution systems, there is still the perception that the biggest impact will come from legacy systems. Of course this is not unfounded, banking and insurance affecting our everyday lives. Base code of these systems is mostly Cobol - this has suddenly given an upsurge in the need for Cobol programmers (a skills availability that has been on the downswing), even to the point of demands causing people to come out of retirement. Because of very sound marketing a high percentage of South African mainframes run on the Software AG product ADABAS, often with Natural. Bateleur Software, one of the most experienced Project and Software service companies in these languages, has thrown a life line to clients by offering a complete range of Year 2000 tools to speed up the Y2k projects on a rental basis. The main reason for this offer is that while most solutions can be constructed from the basic program language, the vital tasks of auditing and searching are extremely time-consuming. Sam Selmer-Olsen, director at Bateleur comments "Our packages are designed for fast, efficient results, ensuring that all century code is identified and anomalies reported. Our rental solution allows the customer to adopt these superior technologies quickly and at lower cost. "We realise that, with many businesses today being connected to the outside world via the Internet/Intranet/Extranet, many Y2K problems might only arise in 2000. We are willing therefore, to extend the rental of the products until the end of that year, This should ensure that customers get the best benefits from the utilities." A further product has been added to this list this week, Bateleur Software having gained the agency for the Software AG-backed tool, Genart for Natural. This solution has been developed for the processing and automatic remediation of Natural application code. Mr Selmer-Olsen comments "Genart is a powerful, on-site re-engineering tool developed specifically for the extraction, analysis, remedy and documentation of Natural code. With Genart you can be certain that your Natural code will be processed consistently and accurately while saving valuable time and resources.
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