With the approach of the Year 2000 and a potential computer
catastrophe, many companies and organisations should consider
implementing some sort of backup system as a practical
solution
As awareness of the Year 2000 problem grows and companies commit
increasing amounts of resources, it is becoming apparent that the
confidence level in Year 2000 solutions is declining. A Meta Group
study reveals the extent of the problem. Surveying more than 1,600
companies, Meta Group found that 78 per cent of companies are
missing Year 2000 project milestones and 97 per cent have yet to do
any contingency planning.
Confidence is further diminished when attention is turned to the
often-neglected PC side of the Year 2000 issue. In reviewing the
myths and realities of the Year 2000 problem for PCs, Stephen Levin
at GartnerGroup asserts, "The idea that PC-based systems (desktop
and mobile) will not be affected by the arrival of the Year 2000 is
a common but dangerous fallacy." The reason for this is that the PC
is frequently used as the primary support tool for business
planning and decision support processes. As a result, any errors
resulting from incorrect data supplied by noncompliant systems may
represent a significant risk to the business."Problems on the
desktop include inaccessible data due to system problems upstream,
localised hardware problems and file-based issues. Levin, in
another GartnerGroup analysis, estimates that, worldwide, 55
million to 550 million spreadsheet applications could have Year
2000 date-related errors, with five per cent of those representing
a significant business risk. In fact, he projects that more than 50
per cent of user-developed applications that process dates will
experience Year 2000 problems by the end of 1998.Levin notes that
organisations that have begun to assess the scope of their Year
2000 risks have been shocked at the amount of user-developed
(spreadsheet macros, desktop database applications and basic
scripts) and custom applications which have arisen within any
business. GartnerGroup estimates that, on average, there are one to
10 user-developed applications per user. While acknowledging that
most will offer little risk to the company, those that do are
difficult to identify ( let alone repair ( in a cost-effective
way.User-developed applications may not be the only risk for
desktops and laptops. Microsoft earlier this year announced the
Year 2000 status of its products. Even popular and widespread
products like Windows 95, Excel 7.0 and Word 7.0 are listed as
having at least minor Year 2000 issues. A recent cover story about
the Year 2000 problem discovered that some PCs, manufactured as
recently as 1997, have Year 2000-noncompliant BIOS. The software
side is also disconcerting says Levin who claims that: "PC software
makers have sometimes misrepresented the true state of Year 2000
compliance in their products. They have simply written off a wide
range of recent (if not current) products that are still in wide
use."To illustrate the breadth of the PC problem, the magazine lays
out a typical set-up. A company with 500 PCs, six commercial
applications and 35 internally developed applications running on 20
servers, with 12 switches, bridges and routers, would have "a very
tough but manageable assessment-and-repair project." They also
note, however, that if each of those PCs produced an average of 10
spreadsheets and five databases, each with 50 date entries, "the
fix spirals out of control".Contingency planningSo is this
doomsday, or is there hope? The consensus solution is to put more
effort and resources into, or simply to begin, contingency
planning. A GartnerGroup research note is explicit: "Contingency
planning is essential to Year 2000 risk management." William
Ulrich, writing in
Computerworld, reports that the
percentage of companies performing contingency planning for Year
2000 increased from three per cent to 72 per cent in four months
this year. "That means companies now realise their best efforts
can't eliminate all Year 2000 problems," he writes.It is clear from
the reporting that even the most thorough Year 2000 evaluation and
repair is expected to miss some things. Expectations are high that
most of the software-based problems will be resolved by the
deadline. The wildcard, though, is embedded systems. These are "the
billions of programmed microprocessors hidden inside nearly every
piece of sophisticated equipment in use today." These systems
contain software code that usually is inaccessible, poorly
documented and not inventoried. Many users will discover the
existence of these microprocessors and their individual Year 2000
problems on January 1, 2000.Additionally, nearly all the Year 2000
solutions to date have focused on mainframes and servers with
little effort or resources for desktop. Yet many IT managers are
beginning to realise that there may be some business-critical data
on the desktops and laptops. GartnerGroup reports that spreadsheets
"represent the highest risk area of user-developed
applications."Contingency planning obviously must be a component of
any Year 2000 solution. In addition to reporting the growing
realisation of the need for contingency planning, Ulrich also notes
that "recent code audits uncovered dozens of fatal Year 2000 errors
in systems that had already undergone remediation and testing." He
states that those findings, combined with "concerns about
supply-chain continuity and embedded system reliability provides
management with more than enough justification for creating Year
2000 contingency plans."Ignore the desktop at your own riskDebate
continues on whether it is practical to extend Year 2000 solutions
to the desktop. The massive variation in configurations and
software needs, and the colossal number of files requiring
examination is prohibitive. Rob Enderle, an analyst at Giga
Information Group, said: "In many, many cases, you're talking about
thousands of desktops, servers, Internet servers and applications.
This will require migrations that haven't been planned. There isn't
enough time anymore and there's a huge shortage of technical people
to help companies get this work done. Now it's going to be far more
expensive, a far higher risk of mistakes, and a far higher risk of
not being completed in time."The answer for many IT managers
apparently is to let the desktop users deal with the problem on
their own. With limited resources and undetermined risk in the
organisation, the belief is that the company can weather the loss
of data on these machines rather than draw valuable assets away
from solving the mainframe and server issues. Given GartnerGroup's
estimate of business-critical data on desktops, this may be a
highly risky gamble.There also remains the question of what to do
with laptops. While desktop users may be required to store their
data on the server where it is protected by backup systems, this is
not a practical option for the laptop user. Equally important is
the status of the typical laptop user. IT managers must consider
that most laptop users are sales staff or executives, each of whom
maintain voluminous data on their machines that can be of crucial
importance to the company. Even if the losses are not critical,
there are great political risks in classifying data losses from
laptops as acceptable.
The Year 2000 safety net toolWhile
there are many facets and tools for Year 2000 contingency planning,
one often overlooked element is backup. Backup and recovery
software obviously is useful to maintain the integrity of data when
crossing over from 1999 to 2000, but it also can be an important
tool in testing a company's Year 2000 solution. Until recently, the
only viable option in such software was at the server level, but a
new product offers the hope of protecting those business-critical
spreadsheets and databases on the desktops and laptops of the
organisation.The practical benefits of backup are many. An
organisation can maintain a full system backup of all networked PCs
( both desktop and laptop. Testing Year 2000 PC solutions,
supporting triage and prioritisation, and offering a complete
backup of the desktop are three of the most important ways that
help backup solutions fit into an organisation's Year 2000 plans.
Testing the Year 2000 PC solutionsOne of the most trying,
difficult and important aspects of an organisation's Year 2000
solution is testing. The risks of catastrophic failure on January
1, 2000 require extensive, in-depth testing of selected solutions.
Yet, the absence of historical data for such a unique event make it
difficult to predict possible problems. Any serious solution must
be tested with real-life systems.Triage is a term gaining currency
in discussions about the Year 2000 problem. Familiar as a medical
term, triage refers to sorting patients and allocating treatment to
maximise the number of survivors. With regard to Year 2000, the
term refers to prioritising affected systems; applications and
files based on their criticality to the business.Is such a process
necessary? Evidence is mounting that not only is it necessary, but
the continued survival of the organisation may depend on it.A
typical 20th century day for the IT department might find staff
working on various projects and, of course, standing by for the
inevitable problems that arise on client PCs. While every day is
different, most IT departments will respond to trouble tickets for
three to eight per cent of the organisation's PCs on most days.
While bothersome, such a rate is well within the capacity of most
departments.January 1, 2000 is certain to be much more burdensome.
IT departments can expect a plethora of crises and other minor
problems to command their limited resources. Some departments may
experience a trouble-ticket rate from client PCs as high as 40 per
cent. Even the best staffed and best qualified IT department in the
world will be unable to resolve all the troubles quickly. Yet, if
the organisation is to function through the days (and maybe weeks
or months) that it will take to fix these problems, some solution
is necessary.GartnerGroup makes the most forceful argument for
triage as part of the Year 2000 planning. In the war against the
Year 2000 problem, most business processes will be injured. The
extent of their injuries must be determined immediately and the
most critically wounded must be addressed first. Failure to triage
and prioritise Year 2000 efforts ( and not utilising emergency
surgery where necessary ( may result in significant long-term
injury to the business itself.Using backup and disaster recovery
software like Replica NDM can make the process of prioritisation
simpler. Low-administration recovery features allow users to
recover uncorrupted versions of their files easily, freeing IT
administrators to focus their energies on more serious cases. Also,
once an offending application is repaired or replaced, the user can
restore any files that were corrupted, again minimising the demands
on the certain-to-be-overburdened IT staff.If an important user's
system suffers a complete failure, the network administrator can
keep them operational by providing a new machine they know to be
Year 2000 compliant. Using Replica NDM, they can restore all the
user's files to the new machine, allowing minimal disruption of
business. Likewise, as other users' systems are repaired or
replaced, complete copies of their files can be
restored.
Doomsday protectionIn the worst case scenario, an
organisation may experience complete and catastrophic failure
throughout the organisation. Limited service can be restored by
using functioning machines and restoring needed files from the data
vault, while intensive work continues on restoring the IT
infrastructure. In addition, once the system is restored, IT staff
are assured that they have a complete, uncorrupted set of files and
applications for every user.
ConclusionIt is no wonder that
so many organisations are turning to contingency planning to cover
them on the PC front. Essential to the success of their efforts is
software that provides them with a safety net. A safety net that
allows uninhibited testing of Year 2000 solutions. A safety net
that affords a means of maintaining basic business operations for
extensive, but isolated failures. Most importantly a safety net
that leaves IT staff reassured that a widespread system failure
will not take with it all the data vital to the organisation.With
Replica NDM, Year 2000 staffs have their safety net tool. A full
backup of networked PCs protects an organisation's crucial data.
Versioning maintains the integrity of data even in the face of
creeping problems, allowing the user to return to data backed-up
prior to the solution or the event that initiated the difficulty.
With negligible network traffic and administration, neither system
performance nor IT staff time need be sacrificed to rig such a
robust safety net.
Compiled by Paul Phillips(
Dataquest