Y2K issue hogs funding
By Elisabeth Horwitt
Network World, 08/31/98
Year 2000 testing and conversion projects are increasingly hogging a larger portion of available IT funding, according to the results of the 1998 Network World/Deloitte Consulting Budget Survey.
Products and services associated with the millennium crisis accounted for the most significant budget increases at 3.5% of respondents' firms. One company had to scale back a Windows rollout to pay for Year 2000 work, while another network manager cited a delay in obtaining approval for a network expansion.
"Year 2000 got the biggest budget increases this year in testing systems and consulting dollars," says Richard Legere, manager of network integration for Adventist Health Care in Rockville, Md.
However, Legere expects the organization to spend even more on the problem next year, estimating the Year 2000 issue to consume at least $1 million out of a $10 million budget. "If applications don't work or won't support Year 2000, we have to get rid of them and find something else," he says.
"We are running into a lot of clients who are concerned with the amount of resources Year 2000 preparation is soaking up," says Gerry Cunningham, a partner at Deloitte Consulting in New York. Some of his clients may be forced to put off implementing next-generation technology because of Year 2000-related allocations, he says.
That's already happening at Arizona State University (ASU). Year 2000 expenses prevented a Gigabit Ethernet rollout from getting full funding, says Darel Eschbach, director of telecommunications services for ASU in Tempe. Eschbach says other projects have been put on hold.
ASU has already implemented Year 2000 fixes and is spending a lot of time testing them, Eschbach says. One project involves "aging data through 12 to 19 months of the new millennium to be sure we get past the first cycle of systems running in the new age," he says. "This is very labor and machine resource intensive, since it essentially requires operating dual systems," Eschbach adds. Testing how the new systems will interact with systems outside the school is also a major headache.
Some firms have simply thrown up their hands on Year 2000 work, at least temporarily. Two IT professionals reported having to put off major Year 2000-related expenditures: one because of "insufficient information" from a vendor; another because "more important projects had priority."
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