When you look back over your life years from now, slouched in your
bath chair at the Twilight Home for Bewildered IT Professionals,
how will you remember the Year 2000?
To jog your memory, over the next couple of pages we've rounded
up what we think are the ten defining events of the first year of
the new millennium. Whether you agree or disagree, drop
Mark
Lewis a line at , to tell us how the year 2000 was for you.
What were the three most momentous moments in your IT year? And
what do you anticipate being the three biggest hurdles you'll have
to cross in 2001? There's a bottle of champagne for the first three
emails to reach us.The Millennium Bug
The single defining moment of the year was always going to be
its opening one. As it turned out, the Millennium Bug's bark turned
out to be far worse than its bite. IT directors across the UK were
able to breathe a collective sigh of relief as the new millennium
dawned with no sign of either nuclear meltdown or atomic
apocalypse. The odd problem cropped up here and there across the
globe - in South Korea, the heating system gave out in an apartment
block, and in Japan, brokerages reported glitches in record-keeping
systems - but all in all, there was nothing to threaten the very
fabric of civilisation. As UK PLC went back to work on4 January, IT
directors reported only minor problems. Of course, it's a little
early to stand at ease just yet: in our first issue of the year, we
warned that 31 December 2000 and 1 January 2001 could both
potentially cause problems.
I Love You virus
Across the globe on Thursday, 4 May, millions of Internet users
logged on to find friends, relatives and colleagues had e-mailed
them with heart-warming protestations of love. But joy quickly
turned to anguish when they realised they had been on the receiving
end of one of the most vicious bugs in the history of the Internet,
one which cost users an estimated $10bn worldwide. The I Love You
virus was incubated by a lone hacker in the Philippines,
24-year-old Onel de Guzman, who escaped prosecution later in the
year. Petrified IT managers were left to ponder just how much more
damaging a concerted strike by a crack team of cyber terrorists
might be. As the full scale of the virus became apparent, the
inevitable witch-hunt began. But while many fingers were pointed at
Microsoft, the reality was that companies needed to learn their
lesson and establish an integrated Internet security strategy
spanning staff training, expert security staff, best of breed
solutions and absolute vigilance.
SSP salary survey
The dotcom debacle notwithstanding, 2000 was the year in which
e-business really settled into its stride. Anybody who harboured
the slightest doubt that the Internet was steadily changing the way
we did business, had only to look at the results of the quarterly
SSP survey of salary and skills that appeared in May. For the most
part, the picture was of an IT recruitment market that was sluggish
and depressed, with few signs of an upturn following the millennium
bug freeze. Of the 25 most wanted skills in the first quarter of
the year, all but three fell in terms of demand. Only Internet
skills proved able to buck this trend. And how. The survey reported
a 31% increase in demand for Java skills, a whacking 139% increase
in demand for HTML skills, and a jaw-dropping 191% rise in demand
for generic Internet skills, compared with the first quarter of
1999.
Windows 2000
Windows 2000, Microsoft's most significant OS release since
Windows NT in 1993, was launched in February amid revelations of
hardware incompatibilities, a Europe-wide anti-trust case and
lingering technical glitches. The company's admission, just days
before the launch, that IT departments would have to upgrade the
Bios in many desktop machines in order to take advantage of some of
the operating system's new features, didn't help any. Despite these
teething problems, a Computer Weekly survey revealed that half of
all IT managers planned to implement Win2000 in its first 18
months, tempted, presumably by the promise of advances in security,
networking capabilities, performance and reliability. There were
teething problems at the Win2000 launch party itself, where the
video element of the stage-managed festivities was struck by a bug.
Co-hosting the show with Patrick Stewart of Star Trek fame, Bill
Gates invited the gathered throng to "go for a test drive".
Unfortunately, the giant screen behind them displayedÉ absolutely
nothing. Rarely can poor Bill have spent a longer or more agonising
15 seconds.
Chinook - a breach of natural justice
Computer Weekly's three-year investigation into the cause
of the RAF's worst peacetime air accident, the crash of a Chinook
helicopter on the Mull of Kintyre, reached a watershed last month.
A report released by the House of Commons' Public Accounts
Committee vindicated our long-standing campaign to prove that
faulty software, rather than pilot negligence, could have been
behind the crash, which claimed 29 lives. Computer Weekly provided
11 of the 34 pages of evidence included in the report. Although
Defence Secretary Geoffrey Hoon declined to order a fresh enquiry
into the accident, the report marked a turning point in the case,
and caused huge embarrassment to both the Government and Ministry
of Defence which blamed pilot error for the crash. The report
judged their logic to be flawed, and found that there were serious
reasons to doubt the safety of the Chinook MK2 at the time of the
crash.
The Computer Weekly E-Business Excellence
Awards
Call us biased, but we at Computer Weekly felt that the
inaugural Computer Weekly E-Business Excellence Awards
symbolised a punctuation mark in the growth of e-business in the
UK. Never in the field of UK e-business had so august a panel of
judges been assembled, nor such an exemplary set of winners
recognised. Over 600 industry movers and shakers crammed into the
grand ballroom at London's Intercontinental Hotel on the night of 7
November. Such was the demand for places that we could easily have
filled the venue twice over. Those lucky enough to be present
witnessed organisations of the calibre of Virgin Atlantic Airways,
Woolwich plc and J Sainsbury scoop award categories covering all
facets of e-business. After all the hype surrounding e-business, it
was good at last to be able to trumpet a few really visionary
organisations. For those organisations that came away from this
year's awards empty-handed, rest assured: there is always 2001!
The Dotcom shakeout
It had to be too good to last. Dotcoms that a month before had
seemed unassailable were left looking like April fools as the
inevitable market rationalisation kicked in early this year - and
none more so than Lastminute.com, whose floatation was a debacle.
Stock market turbulence rocked the start-up community, and not all
were able to survive. Boo.com went the way of all flesh, as did
wetnose.com, clickmango.com and Boxman.com. More recently, Citikey
became the first high-profile m-commerce casualty, signalling the
inevitable bursting of the Wap bubble, after a year of furious
hype. For the survivors of the shakeout, life became rather less of
a breeze. Overnight, venture capitalists began demanding to see
business plans, business models and financial reports, the
miserable so-and-sos, and a generation of teenage millionaires were
faced with the prospect of selling on their jets, sports cars and
speedboats. In such an uncertain climate, the coining, by the
dotcom community, of the acronym P2P, or path to profit, seemed
optimistic. A recent Computer Weekly story hazarded to suggest that
a more useful acronym for the future might be R2R, to describe the
road to ruin that many start-ups are currently travelling.
The RIP Act
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) prompted fears
of a Big Brother state when it came into force in October. The act
gave the government "snooping rights" to monitor e-mail messages
and web transactions. Equally contentious was the empowerment of
employers to survey the e-mail activity of its employees.
Originally the Government had wanted employee consent to be a legal
requirement for any employer surveillance. Reflecting a major
concession, the final Bill only required employers to make all
reasonable efforts to inform staff their communications may be
intercepted.
But no sooner had those dubious attachments been deleted, than
the RIP Act was called into question by two other conflicting
pieces of legislation: the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Human
Rights Act 1998. Both Acts raise a standard for the e-mail user;
the mantra being 'personal e-mail' should remain that way and we,
as human beings have a right to communicate via e-mail freely and
unmolested.
This quagmire of legislation promises interesting times for
employers trying to bring some kind of order to the 7 million or so
e-mails that are sent each day in the UK. What has become 'the
killer app' on the internet could become a massive headache for IT
managers everywhere.
The Microsoft vs DoJ case
Microsoft found itself well and truly on the wrong side of US
anti-trust laws when it was ordered to split in April of this year.
Judge Penfield Jackson found that the software giant had an
unhealthy monopoly of PC operating systems while its use of
exclusionary deals to tie its web browser to PC makers was also
admonished.
The court ruled that Microsoft must split into two companies -
one focusing on operating systems the other on applications. It
also said the company must share application programming interfaces
as soon as they become available. As expected Bill Gates launched a
counter-attack claiming that the US Department of Justice was
hostile towards Microsoft's efforts to make products work well
together. He described the plans as, "like asking McDonalds to sell
burgers, but not fries, and forcing it to give its secret recipe to
Burger King." Users groups welcomed the news, saying that increased
competition would bring greater interoperability to the desktop
market, but Microsoft's appeal looks set to stymie any real
progress for a year or two. Industry-watchers have already dubbed
the "mini-Microsofts" as "Baby-Bills" although so far there are no
plans to remake the "Boys from Redmond."
Farewell e-envoy
September brought the unexpected resignation of e-envoy, Alex
Allen, who returned to Australia in October due to his wife's
illness. While industry watchers agreed that Allen had had good
intentions, still his premature departure seemed somehow to sum up
the Government's toothless approach to the nurturing of UK
e-business. Having flown in from Down Under back in January to
spearhead the UK take-up of e-business, Allen quickly found he was
facing an uphill struggle.
The RIP Bill, that bˆte noir of the IT directorate, hung over
him throughout his tenure. An unsympathetic budget, a lack of
sufficient funds for tackling cybercrime and a siege mentality when
it came to inviting pre-policy consultation, only added to the IT
community's mistrust of the Government.
By June, a Computer Weekly survey revealed that 83% of IT
managers felt that the Labour government had no grasp of the
importance of e-business to the British economy. The government's
e-report card for 2000 should surely read: "must try harder".
What's hot - and what's not
HOT
- .aero, .biz, .museum and other ICANN-sanctioned domain
names
- Whitehall's Webmaster General
NOT
- IT workers over the age of 50
- Not Com, Burn Rate and other examples of e-speak
Fond farewells
- Leo Fantl, member of the 1950s LEO team
- Alan Benjamin OBE, first Director General of the Computing
Services Association
- Alex Allen, the first e-envoy
The year in soundbytes
"We are making this country an e-friendly place for business".
Jack Straw, Home Secretary
"We are betting on the transformation of the software industry
to a service model"Steve Ballmer, Microsoft
"The only things left on PCs are Office and games"Larry Ellison.
Oracle
"This is the year of ASP hype. Next year is the year of reality"
Jon Collins, Bloor Research
"The software industry is not very good at exercising common
sense" Simon Moores, Windows Forum
"Software is unpredictable and the Web is very immature"David
Roberts, TIF
"What is happening is no dot com fad that will come and go"Tony
Blair, PM
"If Windows 2000 lives up to what Bill Gates says it will do
then it looks set to be a Unix killer" Tim Gregory, BACS Ltd
"It is difficult to make a 50 year old Cobol programmer into a
Web programmer overnight"Richard Holway, analyst
"It's debatable whether ordinary consumers are actually
demanding mobile e-commerce services right now" Duncan Brown,
Ovum
"The only way to be 100% safe is not to be connected to the
Internet"Shaun Orpen, Microsoft.
"It is annoying that, after all the investment sunk into the
Internet over the past five years, we've got a new technology and a
new way of annoying users" Jacob Nielsen, Web site design guru
"We have been in dungeons here for two years. We shall be glad
to get out" Gwynneth Flower, Action 2000