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From: rtyler@concentric.net.goaway (Rick Tyler)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Year 2000
Date: Sun, 06 Apr 1997 15:03:25 GMT

On Sun, 06 Apr 1997 09:16:13 +0000, John Small <smalljf@dti.net> wrote:

:It is
:expected to cost over 80 billion dollars to correct this flaw.

Ding ding ding. We have a topic. Where did the $80 billion number come from? Was it the same dimbulbs at Gartner Group who came up with the $40,000+ "cost of ownership" number for a business PC?

I have a source here for year 2000 "information."

This web site is by de Jager & Company Limited and The Tenagra Corporation, at http://www.year2000.com/cgi-bin/y2k/year2000.cgi. They have collected a lot of stuff on the year 2000 problem. They would also be glad to help you with this, for a fee. I found the following on their site:

1. "... the estimated costs of fixing this problem are upwards of $600 Billion (US) worldwide." No sources or methodolgy referenced.
2. "Given the estimate that it will cost approximately $1.00 for each line of code in your systems." No sources or methodology referenced.
3. "Ken Orr, principal at the Ken Orr Institute, and Larry Martin, president of Data Dimensions, Inc., estimate that Fortune 50 organizations will each have to spend about 35 to 40 cents per line of code to convert all their existing systems to accept the change from the year 1999 to 2000." At least it mentions a person's name.
4. "Going by the Gartner estimates, the total cost to correct the entire COBOL code would be US $48-65 billion. All these only for COBOL [not including other OS's]." I don't care what Gartner says, I ain't going back to COBOL.

5-100. These people have a big FAQ. Go check it out for yourself.

Basically, though, there is not a unique idea on the page. Dates on old mainframe systems will blow up when we move to 2000. It's going to cost a lot. Everyone who writes about it either uses numbers without attribution, or they all quote the same Gartner Group study.

The trouble with this is that the Gartner Group is not particularly motivated to *ever* say that everything is just peachy. Why would companies pay big bucks for market research that does not call for change? This is not to say the are lying cheese-heads, but it isn't exactly research in a refereed publication either. Leave us remember the Gartner study that showed that buying desktop computers from their clients would save you money on cost-of-ownership compared to computers from people who are not their clients. (OK, I'm probably wrong here, or maybe not. Gartner is not exactly forthcoming on information like this. They sell information and analysis, they don't give it away.)

Now many business computer managers would read one of the $50 billion stories and mentally translate it to "it's going to cost a lot." The numbers that are thrown around here -- I imagine we should all get used to that $600 billion number -- have their own life as business ULs. It's the two-fifty problem writ large.

Anyone else hear any of these "facts about the year 2000" stories?

• Rick the Former Database Guy Who Always Designed His Systems With 4-Character Years, So Now I'm Not Going To Make Any More Money Because The Damned Systems Won't Break