Year 2000 bug nips Notes

Palm Springs, Calif.

Users of older Lotus Notes software may now attest to what experts have long said about Year 2000 compliance: It can present a moving target.

Progressive Insurance of Cleveland recently learned via an IBM service notification that a Year 2000 glitch in Notes 4.1 and earlier versions had prompted Lotus to label the products noncompliant. Lotus previously told customers that these older versions were Year 2000 ready.

The software flaw - server console log date displays won't work properly after Jan. 1, 2000 - is not the main issue here. Lotus calls the problem "incredibly trivial," and Progressive doesn't quibble over that assessment.

What matters to Progressive is that Lotus is promising Year 2000-related fixes until Jan. 31, 2001, but only for versions of Notes and Domino that it deems fully compliant and current. Lotus' position is that it will provide Year 2000 fixes for Versions 4.5, 4.6 and the upcoming 5.0 editions of Notes and Domino. Version 4.1 is not covered. Lotus insists this software will be at or near the end of its life cycle even without the Year 2000 issues.

Lotus estimates that several million Notes seats may currently be active on Version 4.1 or earlier, with the bulk of those seats found in large corporations. Progressive finished installing 9,000 Notes 4.1 seats in the spring of last year. What puts users of older Notes software in a pickle is that they must upgrade or assume full responsibility for any consequences that result from standing pat on Version 4.1.

"It's fear of the unknown," says Kevin Caine, Progressive's manager of Notes development. "Are we putting ourselves at risk?"

Such is not the case, insisted Lotus officials interviews last week at the company's Domino Developers Conference. Lotus labeled the older versions noncompliant, despite the "trivial" nature of the flaw, only because "we set an incredibly high bar" for defining compliance, said Cliff Reeves, vice president of communications product management.

"I don't know how many companies actually write code to analyze the server logs or have some business process associated with them, but my guess is none," Reeves said. Nevertheless, "we said the data there is just plain wrong, so as a result that is a Y2K issue," he added.

It's an issue that Progressive decided it could not completely overlook. The insurer had hoped to avoid a Notes upgrade until the release that will follow Version 5.0, which is expected by year-end.

"We have 9,000 users and they're all over North America, so doing an upgrade is not easy," Caine says.

After pondering its options, however, Progressive decided to upgrade an as-yet-undetermined number of Notes 4.1 users to a Year 2000-compliant version. The company hopes to reduce the unexpected burden by limiting the upgrade to users of production-related applications and combining desktop installations with other scheduled jobs.

Lotus is offering a free one-time upgrade to those effected.

Caine is thankful that his brush with the Year 2000 bug wasn't worse. "It's early enough now that we could do something," he says.

Lotus is not alone in having to update previous claims of Year 2000 compliance. Such actions are likely to remain a fact of life for corporate Year 2000 teams, according to Andy Bochman, an analyst with Aberdeen Group in Boston.

"Even if you've been doing all of your Y2K work and getting compliance statements from vendors, that doesn't necessarily mean as much as you may have hoped it would," Bochman says.

In the final analysis, he adds, there is only one way to be sure that network hardware, operating systems and applications will correctly process dates when the year 2000 tolls: "Unless you test it yourself, you aren't going to know for sure."