Was the time and money spent on Y2K preparation worth the effort?

Here is one viewpoint:

http://www.strassmann.com/pubs/cw/y2k-ransom.shtml

Perhas avoiding the collapse of civilization as we know it is not
enough of a benefit?

Hi Garym,

What a terrific, albeit belated question. I have wondered about and
discussed the same topic many times.

Nelson-ga - you saw it as insurance presumably, for the unknown yet
likely risk. I would tend to agree to a point .. but certainly not to
the point of using "the collapse of civilization" as a term of phrase.
We can still light a Y2K non-compliant fire .. as we know it, upon
which to cook our kill.

I see it more though as job creation from an idea. Even if Y2K
compliance was an over kill of protection, imagine the "what ifs" had
it been real. Hindsight is indeed a great asset, if only it could be
retrospective. Y2K must have been costly to many businesses. Further
to your question Garym, I would ask: How many business people were put
out of business as a result?

Great question, Phil

Phil and all,

Thanks for the comments. I started thinking about all that happened
and was experienced during the Y2K effort during all our preparations
for the Sarbanes Oxley audit and guidelines. I realize there are many
differences,however, there are a significant amount of similarities in
regards to corporate focus, dollars expended, project and process
management etc.

I didn't want to get into the compare and contrast of Y2K versus
Sarbox, but was hoping to get a level of justification for the time,
money and focus spent on the Y2K effort. I have read justifications
from technical, to philosophical, to spiritual, believe it or not.

Gary

Here in the UK, they really went over the top.

The Government wordsmiths didn't appreciate the problem and published
stuff in which they assumed that it was a computer virus!

Before the event, I wrote an article in which I expressed the view
that it would be a non-event, which it was.

But it's always better to be safe than sorry.

Who can tell?

History is littered with computer failures that have carried some heavy penalties.

Hi,

As an IT professional, I see the Y2K issue as a chance to do some
major "housekeeping" and sort out legacy systems written back in the
60s.  For example, the backl-end systems of a major bank here in the
UK was still counting money in "pounds, shilling and pence" (for those
too young, or American, or both, the UK had a currency of 12 pence = 1
shilling, 20 shillings = 1 pound up until 1972).  Such systems had to
go, and Y2K was the opportunity.

I'd like to give people a thought for the future.  The UNIX clock
version of he Y2K bug is in 2038.  A quick search for "2038 bug" will
show you what I mean.  I'm still a "young" IT professional, and I'll
be in my 50s when this one comes along.  I know it's coming.  I've
even written a warning in my own software saying "This code will break
on Tueday 19-Jan-2038 at 03:14:07".

By that time, I'll be a grumpy old IT professional, set in my ways and
berating how the youth of the day don't even know they're born, and
how it was "real" programming back in "my day" and so on.  I'll say I
told them so.

Glen

It was a non-event precisely because the problem was fixed.  I
remember a few years BEFORE 2000, there was a news story of a
supermarket whose computers crashed any time a cashier swiped a credit
card that expried 2000 or after (after the problem was pinpointed,
they were told to check the date first and not accept such cards).

At the university where I worked, there was a report that contained
graduation year that would mysteriously omit a whole range of
students.  It was not until much later that I realized it must have
been due to Y2K.

While y2k was a real threat, the actual threat was never in the
"collapse of civilization" category except in the minds of people who
tried to make a buck off of it and the media who kept the fires
stoked.

Significant consequences were mitigated by an unprecidented effort to
evaluate the effects of the rollover before the event rather than
after. Were problem found? Of course. Fixed, yes. Any BMD (bugs of
mass destruction)? nope.

Add to the cost in the article mentioned the extra clerical time spent
replying to companied and govenment entities the "your prodoct or
service" was fully y2k compliant. These were preliminaries to the
lawuits that were sure to follow should something, anything, go wrong.
I think that a lot of lawyers were put out that there was no one to
sue.

As an IT Director I was responsible for a development site (one of
several) and configuration management around the world for a large
software company. We started preparations about 18 months in advance.
One benefit was that we were able to purge older equipment that was
actually more expensive to mitigate than to replace.

To keep us focused, we all got countdown clock that had been preset to
the number of days remaining until the event. This switched to hours
and then...

The cuntomer service director and I were the only people in the
building. It was nearly midnight and everything had rolled over
without a problem. We were concentrating on some status screens that
needed to roll here in California and then we could go home.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! 

After we were able to breathe again we found the source... The
countdown clock was really a timer with an alarm. It worked just fine
too.