I over simplify perhaps. But you get the idea.
This warning – fear really! – spread like wildfire
throughout all industries. I have worked in the financial services industry for
many decades and I witnessed first hand the near paranoia of the 1998 to 2001
period. Firms were frantically trying to either fix the feared “problem” or
create a back-up plan that would carry the day should the catastrophe occur.
All during this time many voices claimed there was not a problem. What was a
person to do?
Well, most managers of organizations played it safe and
initially acquired patched software to ward off the problem; then they pursued
streamlined software that eliminated the problem entirely. And while they were
at it computer system architecture was revamped and wholly new technology
platforms emerged.
What followed was a major boom in Information Technology as
an industry. By 2000 American IT standards were revised in sophistication but
along the way the IT perceptual framework morphed into something which we can
now see was an entirely new paradigm. The horizon line had shifted. It was something to behold.
By 2003 the IT industry business performance had slumped as
the newly installed technology was
digested. The boom was followed by a natural slowdown; some even think this may
have contributed to the recession which had its beginnings in 2007 and 2008.
At any rate IT is now front and center in our lives. It is
the backbone of our firms and institutions. It tracks all of our data and
analyzes it to be sure we understand what it is telling us. It is not just numbers.
It is ‘intelligence’ which informs us, helps us evolve in new and exciting
ways. IT helps us relate to the large and small, even tiny or nano-tiny. It
revolutionizes thinking patterns. Relational patterns. We conceive differently
because we have the freedom to think differently now. It is a gift of the IT
Age!
And the spur of this major shift was caused over the fear of
two digits in the year 2000!
Look where it has brought us. We now have new technology
equipment, software, processes and mindsets. When something new in hardware
comes along, it is designed to fit in with existing technology platforms which
themselves are in constant change. The fluidity of change is the key element
here. It allows the new to mix with the old easily and make its change work. As
old edges toward the scrap heap, the IT wholeness evolves yet again, sometimes
by inches, sometimes in leaps, but always moving forward toward something much
more different. It is a synergy in and of itself. It has life and dynamism.
Y2K spurred a sea change and pushed the national and the
global communities to adopt change on a massive scale. It was disruptive at the
time. Even comical. But it was a necessary shift. We reap the rewards each day!
Before Y2K IT platforms didn’t communicate well among
themselves. Industries, even branches of the same firm, could not share data
and intelligence very well if at all. That has all changed. The systems were
ponderous and unwieldy. Promised efficiencies and cost effectiveness were slow
to be realized, and often not until massive new investments were made. Now
those cost benefits are being realized.
But Y2K changed that because new standards and
interchangeability came to the fore. Systems could talk with each other and
business transactions soared throughout
international markets and among and between wholly different industries.
Mergers and acquisitions hit new highs. The ‘blood system’ of data had been
transformed to a universal plasma that allowed a new freedom to create and
innovate. And we continue to benefit from this transformation today.
Where would we have been without the stimulus of Y2K?
April 5, 2012
And where would we be if Bill Gates hadn't believed that 640K was enough?
ReplyDelete