Gartner Predicts: Europeans slow to tackle Y2K

Half of European companies have made no meaningful progress on year 2000, and must begin their planning immediately, a Gartner Group analyst warned last week.

?I am absolutely flabbergasted that so many organisations have not started or done any meaningful work. When those asleep at the wheel realise how much work there is to be done, the panic will be heard throughout the entire industry,? said Gartner research director and Y2K guru Andy Kyte.

According to Gartner?s year 2000 research, only 8% of organisations have mission-critical applications which are now year-2000 compliant. Kyte noted that many organisations have started assessing the cost of any potential failure of national infrastructures such as transportation and utilities.

The manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries are especially advanced in their preparations said Kyte ? once labelled the ?doom and gloom merchant of Europe? by his colleagues for his approach to the year 2000 crisis.

He predicted that problems in cross-company supply chains are likely to hit organisations hardest, sparking litigation over losses caused by the failure to meet contractual obligations for delivery of goods or services.

Kyte cited the example of US finance house Merrill Lynch, which said this week that it would stop doing business with firms that had not dealt adequately with Y2K.

? Report from Jonathan Lambeth at the Gartner Predicts Conference in Paris.