InformationWeek.com

Welcome Guest. | Log In| Register | Membership Benefits

December 13, 1999

The Brighter Side Of The Y2K Problem
Companies say remediation has brought additional funding, upgrades, and attention to IT

By Judith N. Mottl

Related links:

Lessons Learned from Y2K

Not Just Another New Year's Eve...
ike Prince, CIO of Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corp., says he wouldn't mind if an IT issue as critical as the year 2000 problem came along every five years or so. Sound a little crazy? Not if you consider that the need to find and remedy the date-change problem in legacy code attracted attention from top-tier management, rallied a dedicated effort across the enterprise, and forced the IT department to start keeping a clean, organized house.

The clothing retailer is one of many companies where the Y2K problem also opened boardroom doors to IT leaders and delivered a clear message about the importance of technology in achieving key business goals. At board meetings, top management called in Prince to present status reports on compliancy efforts. "There was a visible change in how we interacted," he says. "A CIO's influence is expected more in core business strategy today. [Y2K] strengthened and reinforced it."

The Y2K issue also gave Prince's department the green light to pour resources into an old infrastructure. "It's beefed up quality-assurance processes and cleaned up tremendous sloppiness in apps," Prince says. "Y2K has had a lot of silver linings." The $2 billion company in Burlington, N.J., is in the testing phase of its Y2K-compliance efforts.

The Y2K problem has nothing to do with groundbreaking technology or business innovation, says Kazim Isfahani, a senior analyst with Giga Information Group. While demanding substantial budget allocations and diverting precious IT resources, Y2K remediation is primarily a business-survival project.

Mike Prince Photo by Dan Brinzac However, even though Y2K projects don't carry the same weight as big business-transformation efforts, such as E-commerce projects, they've still helped elevate the role of IT. "First and foremost, the high level of exposure in general has had an impact," Isfahani says. "The rest of the organization now has a better view of the dependence on IT and how critical it is."

A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers study describes the Y2K problem's impact as the "dawning of a bright new world of IT," and one that is moving IT from the back-office "techie" environment to the executive suite.

The Y2K experience has not only mandated assessment of outdated systems and upgrades across the board, but provided the needed funding to update them, says Jayne Burke, co-author of a study titled "Y2K: The Catalyst Behind a Global Renaissance in Information Technology."

"At first, all the attention was about the money, since Y2K was a tough project to estimate up front," Burke says. But the enormous labor commitment, and the possible impact on the business itself, soon became primary concerns at the business-management level.

The newfound attention that the Y2K problem has brought to IT means that many IT departments are becoming more involved in business processes--and are also undergoing greater scrutiny by top business management. "The relationship between IT and corporate has changed," Burke says. "In the 1970s and 1980s, tech professionals were admired from a distance and their domain considered sacred. Rarely were they questioned, and rarely were projects linked to business objectives."

continued...page 2, 3, 4