Resources and time. The Year 2000 imposes a different set of priorities on IS than traditional projects do. Resources and time are the primary issues that will be factored into technical and business decisions for the year 2000.

Personnel. The IT industry in general is experiencing a shortage of trained personnel and the Year 2000 is exacerbating this problem. In the mainframe world, COBOL programmers are getting to be more and more difficult to find and their salaries are increasing. For other legacy technology environments there are similar shortages of capable staffing. The PC environment has the largest community of knowledgeable personnel. Furthermore, they have been largely unused for Year 2000 work as most enterprises have been focused on central IT issues.

Hardware procurement. Today there is high demand for replacement and test platform hardware in the legacy markets. Organizations are finding it difficult to procure what they need in order to complete the work on time. The PC environment will be able to assist on this front due to the proliferation of manufacturers and service vendors.

Supply chain. For executives, one of the most critical issues to deal with is the supply chain. The best way to explain this issue is to think about a manufacturing company. Most manufacturers only carry enough inventory to sustain production for a few weeks at most. If they lose just one key supplier and have no way to compensate for this loss, production can be jeopardized. So, if a large manufacturer identified 300 key suppliers, it would then have to think about the supply chain for each of those 300 suppliers. If there were 3-5 key suppliers for each of the manufacturer’s key suppliers, the manufacturer must now worry about the Year 2000 health of 900 to 1500 companies. Microsoft recognizes the importance of the supply chain issue. Our products can provide a "bridging" technology to maintain communications with suppliers through the year 2000. These technology solutions are going to be dependent upon the individual interface needs.

Cost. The financial impact of the Year 2000 problem can be significant without appropriate planning. Corporations are faced with potentially large outlays of capital in order to prepare their environments for the change of the millennium. As IT budgets grow to meet the needs of the Year 2000 projects, the rest of the organization will have to compensate for the strain created by unplanned expenditures by IT.

Contingency planning. "Contingency planning" for the year 2000 should be undertaken by everyone. There are two elements to contingency planning to consider. The first is contingency for failure. If a system, or group of systems fail due to the Year 2000, there should be a logical progression of reactive activities that IT can pursue to compensate for that failure. The second is the contingency for success. If a key competitor or group of competitors fail because of this issue then it is possible that there will be an excessive amount of business in a very short period of time. This can be as dangerous for an organization as having too little business.

Among the options to be examined as a contingency is the concept of "manual" processes. Manual processes can compensate for the loss of functionality of a system either through forced retirement or outright failure of the system. In today’s world, a "manual" process can be equated with a PC-based process. An example of a manual process would be if a company filled an auditorium with people sitting in front of stand-alone PCs and a printer to process daily transactions. Microsoft technologies can play a critical role in successful contingency plans for the Year 2000.

Digital Nervous System. The key component to any successful organization for the Year 2000 will be a healthy Digital Nervous System. The Digital Nervous System concept is simply the idea that an organization can be thought of as a body. The Information Technology infrastructure of that organization functions as the body’s nervous system. A healthy Digital Nervous System will enable you to respond efficiently to changes in your environment due to the Year 2000. Microsoft technologies, services and partners combine to create the basis for a healthy Digital Nervous System that can address both the technical and business issues at hand.