rs won’t let us down. Covered by contract. "Our lawyers have determined that we are appropriately protected by our legal agreements".On the other hand, Some companies decided to be silent. Management of these companies are fearful of shareholder suites claiming negligence. Many fears that acknowledgement of a serious Y2K problem within a business unit or across an enterprise may cause clients to flee and competitors to flock. The legal ramifications remain unclear for consulting services companies that have provided hardware and software solutions that did not include Year 2000 fixes in the recent past. Others are awaiting the leadership of regulatory agencies and/or financial accounting standard bodies within the federal government for this unique event(3). News for late starters A new survey conducted by International Data corp., of Farmingham, Mass., found that small companies are more likely than the larger firms to neglect the year 2000 projects(10). Out of the 400 firms surveyed, 23% percent had not started the conversion project. A vast majority of these firms (88%) has annual revenue of $25 million or less. In the same survey CIOs and CFOs were asked to rate their concerns about year 2000 conversion. They rated impact on customers first, followed by their competitive position against other companies. Impact on the business partners was rated third, and financial impact was rated fourth. If companies are not addressing the problem right now, they may be in for a lot of trouble. Only viable solutions are to retire and replace, or to repair the system. Ignoring the problem is not an alternative. They need to take an inventory of the software on a system and identify where Y2K will effect it and prioritize the order in which to fix problems. Organizations that did not contract for Year 2000 services by 1997 can expect to pay up to 100% premium to obtain services from leading service providers. Staffing and outsourcing Only 21 ...
