Bitten By The uroconversion' Bug

As if the millennium bug problem was not enough, organisations the world over are now faced with the prospect of shelling out huge amounts for undertaking Euroconversion in anticipation of a single currency coming in force for Europe.

At the same time, the infotech industry has for itself a fresh challenge and opportunity to grab a fair share of the Euroconversion market, which could run into several billion dollars.

The millennium bug is a major problem facing organisations. As most of the current systems provide only two digits to denote a year, at the turn of the century, the computer would recognise the year as 1900, thus, making the whole system go awry.

HCL-James Martin, which has already bagged a few contracts for eliminating the millennium bug, has recently been selected to rectify the problem of re-coding software of a leading rural bank in Europe in expectation of a single currency coming into force in Europe in 1998.

Ashok Jain, president of HCL-James Martin, said changes in the code of the system installed in an organisation would become inevitable once a single currency comes into play, and this would necessitate recoding of software on quite the same lines as that of the millennium bug problem.

An organisation would suddenly find itself dealing in different currency and would, hence, have to re-codify its system before hand, said Jain.

The total size of the contract which HCL-James Martin has bagged is about $ 30 million, which will be carried out in phases.

Jain said the TSRM methodology owned by HCL-James Martin and now being used for solving the millennium bug, can with the help of certain externally acquired tools undertake the Euroconversion exercise as well.

Apart from this contract, we have been receiving a number of inquiries from Japanese companies who being typically farsighted have already understood the gravity of the situation, said Jain.

HCL-James Martin has launched an initiative to lure ex-IBM employees in the US, who have the expertise to convert the code, which was written in machine language, to resolve the millennium bug problem.

The machine language is so outdated that today's software professionals find it near impossible to recodify it. As 30 per cent of the code was written in machine language, we have no option but to rope in retired professionals familiar with the task, said Jain.

At the same time, HCL group company NIIT through its Netvarsity programme is planning to train people across the country to recodify machine language.

HCL-James Martin has bagged a project from a US railroad company to solve the millennium bug problem. It is valued at $ 15-25 million.

The company has undertaken part of a $ 10 million contract for a state government in the US. This government has, in fact, levied a value added tax on the citizens to fund the project. HCL-James Martin is also solving the problem for a leading US bank. The total project is valued at $ 10 million. It has undertaken an impact analysis for BMW.