Data Dimensions Inc, Bellevue, Washington, will in a couple of weeks launch Provisia, a front end to its Ardes 2K online guidebook and knowledge compendium that will enable companies to add resource allocation and project planning to Ardes 2K. The company, which provides Year 2000 consultancy and project management, as well as training, also has a large data center facility outside Los Angeles, where it can carry out actual code updating and testing for customers, emulating whichever major system the user has in-house. Ardes 2K is an object oriented set of processes and instructions available over the web or on CD-ROM, which lays out every step of what a company has to do to tackle its Year 2000 problems. It is compiled from all the real-life experience Data Dimensions has had itself in assisting companies to become Year 2000 compliant, and as well as simply talking users through all the steps at each stage of code analysis, remediation, testing and implementation, also provides practical aids such as pre-written letters to send out to employees, suppliers and customers, spread-sheet style forms to fill in, examples of lines of code and how to change them. Provisia is a front end to this system, which adds actual resource allocation and project management, and integrates back in to Ardes 2K. The company licenses Ardes 2K either to other consultancies, or directly to companies for use in-house. Unisys Corp is apparently bundling a 5-user license for Ardes 2000 with every new server shipped, and Hewlett-Packard has also started offering the product, which it is using for Year 2000 training. Data Dimensions founder, chairman and chief executive Larry Martin says it’s never too late for companies to start addressing their Year 2000 problems, and the product is equally appropriate for large corporations and small and medium businesses. Vice president international services division John Cramer says what would have taken two to three months to get up to speed with Year 2000 processes, is now taking two to three weeks, thus the whole process of Year 2000 fixing is dramatically shortened. The product is also separated into ‘threads’, so that any company that has already started on one part of the Year 2000 process, can ignore that thread and go straight to the relevant threads, such as legal implications, testing and the like. A single seat license costs between $3,000 and $5,000, and the company believes the interest curve is going up steeply now, with small and medium companies and Eastern Block countries starting to take an interest for the first time. Data Dimensions has just released the results of a survey it carried out at an executive roundtable it hosted called On Target: 2000, where it polled chief executives and chief operating officers about how they thought Year 2000 would affect the US economy. Of those questioned, 84% thought the economy was at significant risk, but only 40% thought their own company was at serious legal risk due to business interruption or losses. Martin says this is typical of the reaction that people still don’t think Year 2000 will happen to them. Data Dimensions says the architecture of Ardes 2K can be used for gathering and disseminating knowledge about anything, not just Year 2000. It is equally applicable to European Monetary Union or any other major project undertakings. Once Year 2000 is out of the way, the company, which sees 70% of its revenues from Y2K at present, will focus on other major issues, it says.
