It will have cost them far less to sort it out than it will for those companies which leave it till later. Although computer companies themselves have known about this problem for more than 20 years, most of them have taken very little action. The cause of the problem was the attempt by early computer programmers to save memory space by having only two digits for the year, rather than four. They did not imagine that some of the computers being introduced in the 1970's and 1980's would still be in use in the year 2000. Many of these computers are still in use, however, and some companies use very large old central computers which practically run their business.
Experts say that the solution to what is obviously a simple problem is also simple.
Programmers just need to give the computer instructions to change two digits to four. This is not, however, as simple as it sounds. The lines of code that need to be read and checked can be very complicated and take hours to read. Some code is also in out-dated computer languages. Time and cost could be enormous.