From...

February 12, 1999
Web posted at: 2:49 p.m. EST (1949 GMT)

by Frank Hayes

INTERACTIVE: Have you, or has someone you know, used Y2K as an excuse for an IT problem, work delay, or expenditure? Yes No View Results

(IDG) -- If you thought we were already hip-deep in Y2K-related baloney, better brace yourself. After years of denying that year 2000 will cause any problems for their computer systems, lots of IT people have now realized that almost anything can be blamed on the millennium bug. Suddenly, instead of a threat, Y2K is everybody's best friend.

Case in point: Prodigy Communications Corp., which just announced it will shut down Prodigy Classic, its non-Internet online service by October. The official reason? Not a decline in users. Not the uncertain future of a dial-up computer bulletin board. Nope, Prodigy found the perfect justification: Y2K.

We can't make Prodigy Classic year 2000-compliant, said Prodigy CEO Samer Salameh, so out it goes. Convenient, yes?

Then there's Sun Microsystems boss Scott McNealy, who told an audience last Monday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that Y2K problems in Asia could shut down supplies of computer parts. "Buy lots of computers in the second half of this year," McNealy suggested. He sure sounds rattled by Y2K, eh?

Closer to home, check out your own budget, where the Y2K column may have suddenly become a handy place to hide IT expenses. "A lot of people are using Y2K [charges] to do [regular] system maintenance," according to Ian Ratner, an accounting-fraud investigator quoted in February's U

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Amazing, isn't it? Whether as a whipping boy, a bogeyman or a slush fund, everybody just loves Y2K.

That wasn't possible a year ago. But thanks to Y2K mania in mainstream media, every plumber and playboy knows about the millennium bug now -- sort of. Everybody knows Y2K will cause, well, problems.

What problems, exactly? How bad will they be? That, the experts don't agree about. And that in turn makes Y2K a convenient smoke screen for almost anything.

Now, this would all be just a sideshow for IT shops, except that it makes real information about our business partners' Y2K readiness even harder to come by. It was bad enough when suppliers and customers were simply terrified to tell us the whole truth about that monster Y2K. Now they've discovered Y2K is their best buddy -- and it's worth its weight in lies.

We were all hoping this would get easier. But it won't. There's no real hope that we'll get any more meaningful information from Y2K surveys or Securities and Exchange Commission filings. We won't get useful clues of year 2000 readiness from press releases or public budget disclosures.

Which means it's back to basics. There's one, and only one, sure way to know if your systems can interoperate with those of your business partners. That is to test -- test with real data, test with dummied-up year 2000 data, test in every way you can find.

To make that happen, you'll have to let them test you, too. No excuses, no dodging: The price of knowing where they stand is letting them know where you stand.

So if you're not already in tight with your partners' Y2K teams, start getting chummy -- and fast. With the deadline bearing down, you need all the real friends you can get. The only friend you don't need is Y2K.