News
Products Undergo Y2K Compliance Changes
The Y2K compliance status of three hundred ninety-eight hardware and software products changed during the month of October, Infoliant Corporation reported in a recent survey. The results of the October Compliance Tracker Delta Report include 232 negative status changes (58%), 155 of which resulted from products being downgraded from compliant to another "not Y2K ready" status by their manufacturer. In addition, there were significant Y2K Corrective Action Plan updates for 775 products already classified as "Action Required." With the 118 products for which manufacturers withdrew all Y2K disclosure information, a total of 1,291 products were tracked by Infoliant as reporting some sort of Y2K compliance status change in October.
"All of these changes in late 1999 may mean that companies who thought they had solved the Y2K problem early might experience problems in 2000. If this happens, vendors, lawyers and insurers are sure to ask what steps were taken to stay on top of the latest corrective action plans," remarked Kevin Weaver, Infoliant's Executive Vice President and co-founder. "With as late as some of these disclosures are being reported, and the bulk of corporate Y2K remediation efforts being completed, the history of how some manufacturers continued to revise Y2K readiness information will surely be scrutinized if failures or losses occur. If nothing else, the changes foreshadow a likely increase in technical support calls from users who didn't get the latest information in time."
Some highlights from the Compliance Report include:
-- 3COM discovered a software bug affecting the CoreBuilder (LANPlex) 2500 and 6000 model ethernet switches
-- Microsoft issued patches for the 16-bit versions of Internet Explorer 4.01 and 5.0 and for the 16-bit versions of Outlook Express 4.01 and 5.0
-- NEC Technologies announced that the BIOS installed in its PowerMate, Versa and Ready systems may not match the version tested by the manufacturer -- users are advised to run their own Y2K tests
-- Informix withdrew Y2K support on a number of older versions of its database, programming and data management utility products
-- Microsoft released Service Pack 6 for Windows NT 4.0 Novell released Support Packs 7 and 7a for Netware 4.11 and 4.2, and the Web Access patch for GroupWise 5.2
For more information, visit www.infoliant.com.