The planned changes to the beginning and ending of
Daylight Saving Time (DST) in the United States in March will have
significant implications for organisations around the world, said
analyst Gartner, but few are planning for the effect.
Gartner said few organisations have any
formalised risk assessment and remediation programme in place to
address the potential impact of the time modification.
Disruptions at an IT infrastructure and application level are
likely as a result, and could include interruptions to calendaring
applications, billing applications and security programmes, in
addition to affecting travel and trading schedules, claimed the
analyst.
The changes are effective from 1 March and are one of the many
provisions of the US Energy Policy Act of 2005.
The changes will mean that US DST will begin almost one month
earlier on the second Sunday in March (instead of the first Sunday
in April) and end on the first Sunday in November (instead of the
last Sunday of October).
This means, for example, that between 11 March and 25 March this
year there will be a six-hour time difference between London and
New York, instead of the normal five-hour difference, and a seven
hour difference between cities such as Frankfurt, Paris, Madrid or
Milan and New York, instead of their normal six-hour
difference.
According to Gartner, the impact will extend outside of the US
and any organisation that interacts with US business partners will
also need to undertake a review of their time-related
exposures.
These could include calendaring applications showing incorrect
recurring meeting schedules; incorrect times for arrivals and
departures within the travel industry; and bank transaction errors,
manifesting in late payments.
In addition, there could be trading applications executing
purchases and sales at the incorrect time, and missed deadlines for
admissions and other time-sensitive enrolment programmes.
Gartner has advised organisations to plan ahead and protect
their applications in preparation for the potential
disruption.
Will Cappelli, a Gartner analyst, said, “This is a minor problem
compared to the big code changes required in the recent past for
issues like Y2K or the Euro conversion. However, significant
business damage and liabilities could occur from applications
performing their processing at the incorrect time, if organisations
do nothing.”
As the date for the change approaches, more and more patches to
safeguard applications are becoming available, and Gartner advised
organisations to check with suppliers on a regular basis regarding
relevant patching programmes.
Cappelli said that most of the top IT suppliers have or are
preparing patches for supported products, but are downplaying the
time change effect, fearing repeats of Y2K panic levels.
“Few suppliers have centralised repositories of patch and
related information, although patches for major operating systems
and other infrastructure components appear to be readily
available,” he said.
Gartner said support service departments should be fully staffed
on 11 and 12 March to deal with any problems.
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