is is that it is difficult to justify spending large amountsof money just to remain in business. IBM estimates that they will needto modify over 50 Million lines of code at an estimated cost of $20Million dollars. The end result of which is to make the software workthe same on January 1st, 2000 as it did on December 31st, 1999.The media is not helping matters, either. While almost everyone hasheard about the year 2000 problem, few people realize the potential fordisaster. The attention that the problem has received is minor accountsof interesting "horror stories", mainly centered around inconveniencesand program failures.The problem itself is deceptively simple: To the layman, it's only thedate. How much of an impact could the difference between 99 and 2000 be?There has been no news coverage of a successful business going underbecause of improper planning and preparation. Those are the stories thatscare managers into allocating the resources that are required to dealwith the problem effectively. Unfortunately for most, those stories willnot happen until it is too late.Networking: Multiplying the errorThe degree to which most large computer systems are networked andinterdependent compounds all of these problems. Even extra-enterprisesystems can cause losses for a company; If your widgets need titaniumlugnuts and the lugnut supplier thinks that it's 1900, you won't begetting any lugnuts and will be unable to produce widgets. Bankingsystems are particularly sensitive to this kind of crash as there arehundreds and thousands of nodes in their networks; Consider how manyInteract / Credit Card / Automated Teller systems are in place now! Ifthe software (or firmware) in any one of these systems is not workingproperly it can cause problems anywhere in the network.These problems could range from money not being added and deducted fromaccounts properly, problems with interest and financial forecastsituations, or even a complete crash of the networ...
