Y2K Survey Reveals Growing Confidence in IT
                     Readiness

                     IT managers highly confident of success, especially among suppliers and
                     customers

                     By Rick Saia
                     12/20/99 After several years of alarms, warnings, prophecies and urgings,
                     information technologymanagers appear to have one final message in the remaining
                     days before 2000: Bring on Y2K! 

                     Nearly all IT managers contacted this month for Computerworld's quarterly Y2K
                     confidence survey said their firms' information systems will be ready to handle the
                     date change come Jan. 1. Estimations of their own readiness hit an all-time high of
                     4.8 out of a possible 5. But more significant was a huge rise in confidence among
                     these ITmanagers that their customers and suppliers will make it also. 

                     Asked to rate their confidence in their business partners' compliance on a scale of
                     1 (not at all confident) to 5 (extremely confident), the mean answer moved up from
                     about 3.95 in a September survey to about 4.06 this month. 

                     Supply-chain confidence has increased steadily since Computerworld conducted
                     its first Y2Kconfidence survey in September 1998. 

                     "My people here aren't worried," said Steven Greenwood, MISdirector at Newpro
                     Inc., a Woburn, Mass.-based seller of home windows. Greenwood said he has
                     been assured that his company's supplier of raw materials -- a foreign firm -- will
                     be year 2000 compliant. 

                     Such news is music to the ears of Peter de Jager, the Y2K expert credited with
                     having sounded the call on the Y2K problemwith his 1993 Computerworld column
                     "Doomsday." 

                     "I honestly believe there is reason to be more confident than we were before," de
                     Jager said. "A lot of the ranting and raving by myself and many others
                     (was)because we weren't doing anything." 

                     But apparently, a lot of work has been taking place since the first confidence
                     survey in 1998: 

                           In October 1998, less than 8% of firms surveyed said their systems were
                           fully compliant. 

                           Today, that number is around 60%. Another 37% said 90% to 99% of their
                           systems are ready. 

                           In those 14 months, the percentage of respondents who believed Y2Kwould
                           cause significant economic problems in the U.S. gradually fell to just 5% this
                           month, from about 34%. 

                           The percentage who foresee only a minor impact rose steadily from 7% in
                           September 1998 to 36% this month. The majority of the 265 ITmanagers
                           surveyed this month -- 54% -- see spot problems. Another 5% see no
                           impact at all.

                     "I think that there may be pockets of minor annoyances, but overall I don't think
                     there's going to be a big problem," said David C. Eakin, director of client/server
                     systems at the U.S. Navy's Naval Inventory Control Point in Mechanicsburg, Pa. 

                     But to ensure they'll continue operating, 78% of the firms surveyed have, or plan to
                     have, contingency plans in place. 

                     "I think we're going to be in good shape," added Michael Rizzo, manager of data
                     processing at Gold Medal Products Co., a Cincinnati maker of concessions
                     equipment for entertainment venues. "At best, there will be minor problems." 

                     While he acknowledged that some home PCs might display the wrong dates, Rizzo
                     said that's nothing compared with what Y2K remediation means to businesses. "If
                     they're in business to make money," he said, "they're going to make sure it's going
                     to work."