The immense combined effort and resources invested in achieving Y2K compliance might have seemed suspect to individuals with an incomplete understanding of the issue, when global co-operation paid off and resulted in a relatively uneventful rollover.
Few people, however, have grasped the benefits of having updated; modern software systems running plants all over the world more efficiently than before the Y2K issue prompted investments that would otherwise not have taken place.
"I hope that a lesson has been learned about the value of proactively and continuously investing in and maintaining systems that are up to date and providing the latest available technology," argues Dave Wibberley, MD of South Africa's only supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) developer, Adroit Technologies.
"It is the nature of information technology (IT) - as a relatively young industry - that advances and improvements will be made on a year-to-year basis. While it might seem like this puts the consumer in a position where he has to keep on buying the same product over and over again, the benefits to his business in increased operating efficiency easily outstrip the funds invested," says Wibberley. He pointed out that most Y2K systems were obtained at significantly reduced costs due to special discount structures offered during the period leading up to the millennium.
"These benefits range from reduced downtime to lower software procurement costs, as updated systems in turn mean less strain on the support departments of software suppliers."
Adroit Support Manager Andre Botes agrees. "We did not receive a single Y2K-related support call," says Botes. "However, since we were fully prepared for major support activities, customers benefited from our increased availability during this period, even if only as a source of information."
Development and Testing Managers Mike Lamusse and Rob Hill add that the intensive testing and documentation required by Y2K compliance procedure has further benefited Adroit in that every possible aspect of the product, as well as its relationship with other automation components, has been studied and documented afresh. "We knew that our product was compliant and therefore did not have to re-engineer anything, but we did go to great lengths to prove compliance according to all standards, even from a systems approach," says Hill.
Wibberley concludes by saying that Adroit looks forward to 2000 as an era where money will be spent in real terms on maintenance and expansion, starting from a fresh platform with Y2K paranoia having been put to bed.
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