Can anybody comment on April 1

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With Canada, Japan, and New York's fiscal years starting on April 1, what is expected to happen? Or will we just have to wait and see.

-- lisa_in_cedar (efchange@hotmail.com), March 26, 1999

Answers

Wait and see. Threads here have said everything from being a good indicator to that nothing will happen. Generally: there may be some indications of future problems, especially NY and Canada because of size. But don't expext minor problems to be admitted IF they occur - if major problems occur and cant be hidden, games over.

-- Jon Johnson (narnia4@usa.net), March 26, 1999.

Japan starts FY1999 on April 1. Yes, their FY is behind, not ahead as is usually the case.

-- Anonymous99 (Anonymous99@anonymous.com), March 26, 1999.

April 6 is FY2000 for United Kingdom (England, Scotland, etc.)

-- David Holladay (davidh@brailleplanet.org), March 26, 1999.

This question came up at last night's presentation by Ed Yourdon and Paula Gordon in D.C. There are two issues, really: 1) Are there going to be problems due to the inability to handle (FY) 2000? 2) Are these problems going to be actual showstoppers?

For 1), the answer is almost certainly YES. For 2), it is highly speculative. Ed pointed out that state unemployment systems that could not directly handle an expiration date of 2000 had been "fooled" into working by simply giving a late 1999 date. Conceivably, until the year 2000 per se, workarounds and tricks could be found to perhaps allow unremediated systems to continue to function.

But, then again, maybe not....

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), March 26, 1999.

My gut feeling, based on watching events after Jan 1, 1999, is that everyone will make the supreme effort to show the public that nothing major happens. You must admit, the world's eyes are focused on these folks and they don't want to be embarrassed.

Possibly if we hear about something it will be either 1) silly and amusing things that are fun to give to the press, 2) problems that are quickly taken care of and thus show that they can handle any problem, or 3) problems that cannot be easily covered up, like explosions, fires, etc. Then even these (number 3) will probably try to be attributed to a non-Y2K problem source.

Sincerely, Apple

-- Apple (villarta@itsnet.com), March 26, 1999.



This will be relatively minor (not saying it won't be significant).

The year 2000 bug manifests itself when you compute or compare year date or time, the year component of those fields is depicted by less than 4 digits, and this "shorthand" is not properly handled by logic.

So, this is a change of Fiscal Year related problem. It will show up in budgetary systems, finance and accounting systems and systems which interface to those systems. For it to show up, you have to compute or compare on Fiscal Year, with both current Fiscal Year and something looking back. My experience (might not be indicative of objective reality) is this is not common. Most of the Financial systems I've dealt with close the books each year and don't look back.

In business systems a LOT of Year 2000 bad logic causes one problem before 2000 and the same logic causes a different problem after 2000 on encountering dates before 2000. So this subset of Fiscal Year Logic would already have had problems and hopefully been fixed.

Probably bigest area of failure here will be in the area of data archiving. Probably cause a lot of stuff which should be archived to not be, and a lot of stuff which should be archived to be erased. With decent library maintenance and backup, you could make this a "bump in the road".

-- Noel Goyette (ngoyette@csc.com), March 26, 1999.


Big Financial Gridlock will occur from fy 2ooo crossover. It is already happenining on transactions over 100 million dollars. I know of a foundation that has had it's money held up for months and Fed reserve is not helping very much. Y2k is already affecting big banks in big ways.

-- y2k aware mike (y2k aware mike @conervation .com), March 26, 1999.

Lisa_in_cedar,

Another recent thread on this subject (March 9) is...

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000add

"fiscal years reported as yr 2000"

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), March 26, 1999.


I believe the unmasking of Dieter will be the most signficant event.

Problems that arise from fiscal-year roll overs do not occur en masse at the stroke of midnight, 1 April, 1999. If that were the case, where are the news reports of massive IT failures from all the companies that rolled over on1 February, 1999 - almost two months ago?

Most financial peeks into the future that are usedto trigger a decision occur at 6 months, 90 days, 60 days and 30 days before the targeted date. That's why June, 1999 is important...The targeted look-ahead date will require a calculation that results in a value that is recognized and valid for further use by other "action" software or people.

It is now March, 1999. One year from now is March, 2000. Where are the massive failures from software looking ahead one year from today? If you are looking at fiscal-year roll overs as precursors to future y2k failures, you're looking at the wrong indicator.

You'll see indicators starting in July, increasing in October, exciting in November and thrilling in December.

1 April, 1999?....Think Dieter.

-- PNG (png@gol.com), March 26, 1999.


Haven't seen our friend DiEteR in a few. What's up with the unmasking? <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 26, 1999.


PNG,

So what are you saying? That June 1 or June 30 we'll see an avalanche of Y2K problems? Will the companies try to wseep them under the rug?

-- June (June@wanttoknow.com), March 26, 1999.


It will take time for the effects to percolate. I believe we'll get a taste by the end of August of what's really been brewing in mission- critical IT remediation. My "guess" is to think "logarithm" for the remaining trigger dates.

After April, there is not enough time for companies to change course or strategies. They can only hope they made the right decisions on defining mission critical systems & applications and vendors. Just keep working the problem.

Lined up on runway 00. Full flaps, gear down and locked, tray tables up, seat belt sign is lit.

-- PNG (png@gol.com), March 27, 1999.


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