Because of a recent change in the agreement with the vendor, the admissions systems will now be the last component to be integrated and so1,500 hours of recoding are needed to bring those systems into compliance. The computing center recently asked all departments and offices to inventory their hardware and software to begin the process of determining whether they are Y2K compliant. Reed said the University's liability decreases over time with the purchase of new equipment and updated software. Also, Y2K may not be a factor depending on what work the computers do. The computing center will make available copies of Microsoft Office products to departments who need to upgrade, which should alleviate many of the software problems.
Experts recommend that the inventory and assessment of liability are the place to begin.
An example of the uncertainty of assessment is the case of Eudora. Charts in the recent memo identified Eudora as noncompliant, but the vendor's website says all versions of Eudora are compliant. Reed said two things were at work. First, whenever there was a quesiton of compliance, the charts listed the product as noncompliant to err on the side of caution. Second, a test of Eudora by computing services showed that Eudora failed far in the future.