Costs

Worldwide Cost for the Year 2000 Compliance

Today, the average cost to fix the codes of legacy systems is between US$ 1.00 to 1.25 per line of code(LOC). As the deadline gets imminent, the cost will probably rise up to US$ 7.00.

Let's suppose that a company has the following systems.

• Number of modules: 10,000
• Number of LOC: 5,000,000
• Number of date-related data: 80,000-100,000
• Number of interface files: 100

As a real life situation example, Hitachi Data systems estimates that an average program will require 50,000 man days(227 years) to analyze and re-code. To finish on time, you would need 113 programmers working for 2 years.

For small and medium sized companies, it is hard to give an estimate without an assessment of the current system. Obviously, the more complex the system is, the higher the cost will be. It will be better for small and medium sized companies to act early, since they will have difficulties in finding necessary resources as the deadline gets imminent.

Skyrocketing costs and narrowing windows to succeed

The cause of the Year 2000 problem is simple, and the solution is well known to everybody. But the problem arises because the scope of the problem is too widespread and that everybody faces the same problem at the same time. All companies need to fix codes, and people with knowledge in old mainframe and COBOL are scarce. Consulting firms and system integration firms will have to offer high salary to COBOL programmers. As the deadline approaches, the price of computer programmers will jump. Many companies will suffer unexpected system failure and data damage. It is extremely difficult to foretell if that will happen to your company. If something happens unexpectedly, you will have to offer even higher compensation to the already-expensive programmers.

The bottom line is your freedom from bugs with low cost solution. Netspace is easy to use.

Possible additional expenses

The US government originally estimated the overall cost to fix the Year 2000 problem between US$ 20 to 30 billion. Industry experts estimate the final cost to be between US$ 400 to 600 billion worldwide.

Litigation resulting from the millennium bug is inevitable. In the US, the litigation cost is expected to reach US$ 1 trillion.

In many industrialized nations including the US, system malfunction will result in thousands of litigations. Auditing firms, part suppliers, securities brokers, software developers and consultants will be the major targets of the lawsuits. Your organization might be exposed to such a risk. To solve the Year 2000 problem properly, a company must fix, test and run all the files, programs, interface files and all other environment sharing data at the same time. It is by no means a simple task.