WATCHING THE WORLD: IT industry's new millennium fears

David Knott
[email protected]

Information technology (IT) departments everywhere are preparing for the millennium, fearing chaos when the date in some application-specific software changes from 1999 to 2000.

Older programs often use two digits to denote the year. Applications could jump back to 1900 instead of moving to 2000, creating havoc in applications where the date is crucial (OGJ, Mar. 11, 1996, p. 39).

Brian Walters, divisional director of CMG U.K. Ltd., London, said petroleum companies were among the first to recognize the problem.

"Some have said this is a special project," said Walters, "and set up millennium teams and allocated them resources and budgets. Others have said this is an IT problem for each business unit to solve.

"The first group could have business units waiting for Year 2000 project people to tell them everything is all right. The other group has business units deciding which systems are really useful and need upgrading.

"A special IT team could put an application right, only to find the business unit was planning to replace it anyway. It is better for each business unit to decide how its own systems should go through the millennium."

Early hit

To add to the Year 2000 problem, it was recently realized that many programmers writing in the early 1970s chose Sept. 9, 1999, or 09/09/99, to represent infinity when entering project end dates.

When 1999 arrives, programs designed to run forever could shut down. If orders, for example, are scheduled during weeks following the date of processing, file closure could occur after inputting of the first dates in 1999. This could happen during late 1998.

Elaine Eustace, head of CMG's Year 2000 unit, said, "This new problem is not hugely difficult to correct, but the big worry is time. There is less than a year and a half to go until the beginning of 1999."

Again, Walters said petroleum companies are generally on top of this second problem. But he warns of a third fear that is even more difficult to tackle: dates stored in embedded chips.

Embedded chips

Many control systems contain embedded chips, which are electronic devices with a limited amount of "intelligence" provided by instructions either specially programmed into the chip or hard-wired inside.

Irving Caplan, associate director at CMG, said embedded chips could be tailored to carry out a specific activity, such as controlling valves, and were popular in the 1980s in equipment such as programmable logic controllers.

"More recently," said Caplan, "microprocessors have replaced embedded chip technology. But embedded chips are very reliable, so there could possibly be a great many still in use.

"The problem is that nobody knows whether the date was thought relevant in programming each chip. It is possible the programmers did not think the millennium would be an issue."

Testing of embedded chips in service is difficult and costly, while it is often unthinkable to take the chips off line to test them. In many cases replacement is the only answer.

"One oil company said it didn't know what to do about embedded chips," said Walters, "so it simply doubled its Year 2000 project budget to buy new chips."