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The Bank of Hawaii has 170 software vendors. The bank is trying to get written compliance statements -- let alone actual updates -- out of them.
This is from the International Technology Association of America (Jan. 7).
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Take a typical Y2K conversion. Spread it across the islands of the Pacific and Pacific Rim. In addition to English, add French, Chinese, Japanese, Polynesian and other languages. Then start thinking in terms of mainframes, minis, PCs, LANs, WANs, applications, operating systems, security systems, elevators, air conditioning systems and more. Beginning to get the idea? Not exactly paradise. Or is it? Welcome to the Bank of Hawaii.
And meet Bill Valuet, Vice President of the bank's Year 2000 Project Office. Valuet is responsible for the entire Y2K program--a program which covers 100 branches on six major Hawaiian islands and the First National Bank of Arizona. But also banks in Tahiti. Tonga. Taipei. Fiji. Guam. The Marshall Islands. The Solomon Islands. Tokyo. Singapore. Even New York City. . . .
Managing means looking outside the enterprise for answers too. Valuet anticipates that many of his Y2K concerns will be addressed by upgrades to commercial software products. In fact, seventy percent of the roughly 250 application programs running in the bank's IBM MVS environment have been purchased from outside providers, Valuet said. So far, he claims, the response from his vendor community concerning compliant releases has been "pretty good." . . .
Thus Valuet expects to spend proportionately less time on code remediation and more time on product testing. To date, this activity has been limited to the testing of in-house date routines. "We're still developing a generic testing methodology," Valuet said. "What do we want to test for? The rollover of December 31 to January 1? Leap year? Correct input and output? Being able to process successfully a 1985 date in the year 2000?"
Although he is asking the questions, Valuet seems confident of the answers. "I am not as worried about the mainframe piece," he says. The game, of course, has many pieces and many involve PC applications.
"PCs are running macros, spreadsheets, providing a function that services clients. There I have trouble," Valuet said, noting that these date dependencies are spread out over kingdom come, will be difficult to find and a major challenge to keep compliant.
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