Small Bead Businesses and the Y2K (Millenium Bug)
As of the end of July, around 18% percent of small businesses in the US will have problems when the calendar changes to 1 January 2000. That's 1,400,000 small businesses. I have no statistics for other countries, but in general, Western Europe and Japan are probably worse off, while the rest of the world is not as computerized and doesn't need to worry as much.
With the exception of Colgate-Palmolive and the car companies, larger companies are doing almost nothing to help the small businesses they supply. We have to fend for ourselves. There are some handy tools.
Y2K Help Center for Small Businesses at the National Institute for Standards and Technologies. You can call them at 1-800-925-5775 (925 translates to Y2K, but I find it easier to use all numbers) or email
them.At the
Small Business Administration site you can down load Power-Point seminars, the NIST Jumpstart Kit and see a webcast of top software vendors discussing the problem and solutions.The
Y2K Specialist site has links to all the major hardware and software makers. If you have either that are more than two years old, you should check on your version's Y2K readiness. Software makers, at least, have patches you can download to update the software.The
National Federation of Independent Businesses site let you order a free booklet named "Countdown to 2000" as well as links and other information.The
Gordon & Glickson LLC site has compliance statistics and surveys, information on accounting problems, local user group links and government-sponsored best practices.Source: "Business Year 2000" Computerworld 33:30, p. 45 (26 July 1999). More on the story from the
Computerworld web site.