Computer experts from Oak Brook to Osaka plan to spend the next three years in a crusade to mop up the effects of the Millennium Bug. The war could cost $600 billion.
The bug is either a gift from the past or a hangover waiting to happen, depending on whether one is an exterminator or just another company with bugs waiting to hatch at 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2000.
Exterminators, in fact, have become a huge industry. Roughly 800 computer executives and assorted experts from throughout the country are meeting in Chicago this week in what amounts to a trade show for a new industry now blossoming as the clock ticks steadily toward the end-of-century rollover.
The Millennium Bug refers to warnings of potential meltdowns everywhere from microwave ovens to mainframe computers as machines programmed to keep time using only the last two digits of the year become confused when the 1900s give way to the 2000s.
Fixing the bug before it bites may be a short-lived industry, but it certainly is a booming one.
The size of the Chicago conference itself is a sign that computer programming companies specializing in the seemingly simple task of replacing two-digit years with four-digit numbers should enter the next millennium considerably richer.
Growing numbers of corporate executives are beginning to realize the extent of their potential problem and the dwindling number of months left to fix it, said sponsors of the show, Year 2000 Chicago, now under way at the Fairmont Hotel.
In many ways, those at the Chicago session are hired guns, companies that tend to sign on as consultants to corporations and ferret out bugs.
While major computer consulting companies such as Chicago-based Andersen Consulting or Ernst and Young work internally to fix Year 2000 problems, much of the work in corporate circles is being farmed out to enterprises that have decided to specialize in the issue.
One of the companies catering to millennium clientele is SPR Inc., which was founded in 1973 as a mainframe service provider. Already, more than a quarter of the Oak Brook-based company’s $32 million in annual sales comes from contracts to correct the date problem in old software. But even that is small potatoes compared to the potential market as the great number-flipping inches nearer, said SPR chief executive Rob Figliulo.
“There is a huge pentup need out there,” he said.
Most of the software that SPR and others are fixing was written in a now antiquated programming language called COBOL that used the 2-digit method of calendar notation to save memory on early mainframe computers.
To fix one of these programs, experts must first perform an operation called decompiling, to restore it from the 0s and 1s called machine code into English words and numbers that can be read and corrected.
Once the glitches are found, the exterminators must repair the damage and then test the fixed program to make sure that no new gremlins are introduced while fixing the old ones.
This complicated and laborious process is costly, but less costly than it would be to replace all of the affected computers and software with new, bug-free systems, experts say.
Ironically, many of those now reaping rewards for recoding systems are the same people who helped create the problem in the first place.
In fact, the veterans who wrote mainframe software with the millennium problem 20 and even 30 years ago now can argue persuasively that they are uniquely suited to fix it today.
Thomas DePasquale, senior vice president for data warehousing and Year 2000 services at Oakbrook Terrace-based Platinum Technology Inc., confessed in an interview that when he started to fix the bug for one of Platinum’s corporate clients, he decompiled one offending program and saw that he himself had written it as a young programmer.
Now Platinum expects that up to 20 percent of its revenues over the next three years will come from fixing the problem, also known as Y2K (for the metric equivalent of 2000), for blue-ribbon corporate clients, according to DePasquale.
He emphasized that the problem arose because there had been no choice but to use the shortened dates in the pioneering days of the computer revolution.
“You need to remember,” said DePasquale, “that one of today’s desktop computers is far more powerful than the mainframes we had to work with when this was done.”
Platinum was one of the major success stories of the mainframe computer era, with founder and chief executive Andrew J. Filipowski building a company that produced custom software for large corporations, allowing them to automate business processes using technologies such as relational database management.
Like many mainframe-oriented companies, Platinum has had to scramble in recent years to cope with the move from the “Big Iron” mainframes to today’s commonplace networks of desktop computers and the Internet.
Platinum’s strategy to make the transition from the mainframe-only systems of the past to the mainframe and desktop networks of today has involved a wave of acquisitions of smaller companies.
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The company has bought more than 40 companies involved in various aspects of networked computing in the past two years, a tactic that forced it into a string of quarterly net losses.
Now, said DePasquale, Platinum is in a prime position to offer companies debugging services.
“We look at Y2K as a welcome business opportunity and one that will be good for us for a couple of years while we move on to other things for the long run,” said the bug-writer-turned-exterminator.
The need for people with expertise like DePasquale’s is tough to fill, in part because so few programmers these days bother learning the computer languages used by mainframes, the machines most at risk for the Millennium Bug.
Archaic mainframe tongues like COBOL, long derided by computer scientists who believed that workstations and PCs would slay the old dinosaurs, are highly valued now that so many aging mainframes are due for surgery.
As a result, firms like SPR have poured resources into training fluent COBOL speakers. SPR’s Figliulo is snatching up humanities-trained college graduates who never ran afoul of the anti-mainframe bias and now hope their computer careers outlast the Millennium Bug cleanup.
At the same time, college programs that focus on mainframes are thriving. A beneficiary is DePaul University’s Computer Career Program, which is one of the few places still churning out COBOL specialists, according to Helmut Epp, dean of the School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Services.
“Demand for our graduates is much greater now than ever before,” Epp said. “They’re in a good position because we realized some time ago that mainframes run the world, not PCs.”
The facts support Epp’s contention. Experts estimate that 80 percent of all applications for Fortune 500 companies are mainframe-based.
Not only are most of those aging hulks staying put for the foreseeable future, but new blood is replenishing their ranks. The recent roasting of world chess champion Garry Kasparov by chess-playing computer Deep Blue scored a marketing coup for International Business Machine Corp.’s newest (bug-free) mainframe series, even though IBM actually used smaller machines for the chess software.
Yet for the same reason that computer scientists long shunned COBOL, many companies cheated themselves out of mainframe experts who could have helped them avert the Millennium Bug quagmire, according to Epp.
“The last round of corporate downsizing touched a lot of data processing people for the first time,” he said. “Employers realized only later that some of the new technology they were counting on to replace mainframes would take years to play out.”
Now those same companies find themselves scrambling for services they once scorned. In many cases, the COBOL boom has given a new lease on life to retired or downsized mainframe hackers, often over 50 years old, who can almost name their price as recruiters come calling again.
But Figliulo isn’t fond of the embittered attitude many in that crowd bring. He uses them sparingly, as mentors at SPR’s “boot camp,” where young recruits learn the arcane art of mainframe debugging.
A young and spry work force may be needed to tackle the Millennium Bug. The amount of code that workers must sift through will approach eye-numbing proportions–over 100 million lines per Fortune 500 company, by some estimates.
Although that may sound like drudgery, it’s work that’s welcomed by the music and philosophy majors Figliulo hires. Many of them are thrilled to have a $30,000 salary and the prospect of advancement as the millennium approaches.
But what future awaits bushy-tailed COBOL experts after they’ve gone blind changing two-digit years to four-digit years? Their mission has a natural end, after all; will they also meet the downsizing ax, to be found wandering the city streets after the promised Millennium Bug apocalypse?
Figliulo insists that his millennium trainees, who now make up 20 percent of his staff, are not temporary workers.
“It would be downright immoral to sell somebody on a whopping three-year career,” he said.
In the short term, Figliulo said, Millennium Bug problems will keep trickling in, even after the big date change. Eventually, his millennium experts will help in the transition from old systems to newer machines.
The blood, sweat and tears that companies spend on their mainframes now may even offer a silver lining in the next century, according to Figliulo.
“We want to regain control of those systems, because ultimately, that’s the only place where the core business rules reside for these companies,” he said.
The knowledge that companies gain from their Millennium Bug projects will demystify such essential computer tasks as accounting and billing, Figliulo said. And that may help make the next crisis less crippling.
“We’ll go from speaking in code to building models anyone can understand,” he said.
NEW ATTITUDES, HABITS CAN HELP, EXPERTS SAY
In many ways, the Millennium Bug is nothing more than a jumbo version of the routine computer crashes and network failures that have become a hated hallmark of corporate life.
Moreover, experts say, the reason many companies are slow to react to the year 2000 crisis is the same one that keeps computer failures about as common as coffee breaks.
The problem goes beyond technology. It’s about attitude.
From prejudices deeply ingrained in the corporate culture down to hard-to-shake habits of employees, experts say the way businesses think about technology hurts them when it comes to reacting to problems.
Part of the reason is the so-called “CIO-CEO disconnect.” When a company’s chief information officer has no direct relationship with its chief executive officer, they say, only a disaster captures the leadership’s attention.
Sears, Roebuck and Co. spokeswoman Jan Drummond said many CIOs report to the chief financial officer, and thus have only an indirect voice in the boardroom. She said the brass at Sears realized that technology could make or break the company.
“Our CIO, Joseph Smialowski, is a senior vice president and a member of the executive committee,” she said. “We have senior management that understands how critical information systems are for us.”
Rob Figliulo, of Oak Brook-based Millennium Bug zapper SPR Inc., said: “Some CEOs used to say, `I’ll be retired by 2000. Why should I worry?’ I bet a lot of those people wish they’d fixed the pension system before they left.”
Workers at the rank-and-file level also must understand that they can exacerbate the Millennium Bug problem with sloppy habits, Figliulo said. Poor design in a spreadsheet, for example, can ripple through a company.
Avoiding such mistakes is tough for employees who are set in their ways, said Helmut Epp of DePaul University, but the accumulation of the right worker habits will make computers more reliable.
“It took a long time for a maintenance culture to grow around the airplane industry to the point where people felt safe flying,” he said.
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The same kind of culture is largely in place for computers, according to Epp, dean of the School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Services:
“Most mainframes are now so secure that people can bet their businesses on them.”
– By Jeremy Manier