Few dispute that the so-called Year 2000 problem warrants attention. Quantifying the financial toll of cleaning up incomplete data is a messier chore. The cost varies widely depending on the size of the company and its industry, a Chicago Tribune survey of the region's top 100 businesses found. Of the 40 companies actual software bug. With dates, programmers can easily define the nature of their problem.
Most true bugs require significant detective work to determine both the cause and the solution.
What complicates the problem, however, are the very things that have driven some of the most important computer-generated productivity gains. The computing world is more connected than ever. Corporations have trimmed costs and accelerated decision making by sharing their data with customers and suppliers. As such, a company's Year 2000 strategy may be only as good as the weakest link in its computing chain. As an extra measure of protection, Wallace set up a buffer system for its computers that sifts through data from outside sorequired to break out their material Year 2000 costs, there is little agreement on what those numbers mean and how they should be tallied.