December 23, 1999 Web posted at: 11:37 a.m. EST (1637 GMT) by John Cox and Carolyn Duffy Marsan

From...

(IDG) -- Even the best-prepared corporate Y2K teams cannot know exactly what will happen to their networks when the new millennium arrives. But the teams do know exactly how they will react.

That's because network professionals have left little to chance in fashioning contingency plans that spell out soup-to-nuts escalation processes for dealing with whatever Year 2000 bugs may slip through their best defenses.

"There will be no 'ad hocness' on New Year's Eve," says Irene Dec, Year 2000 program manager at Prudential Insurance in Newark, N.J. "We have very defined procedures in place. People are not going to run into a problem and ask, 'Gee, what do we do now?'"

Not everyone will be so well-prepared, of course. For companies that don't have the luxury of huge IS staffs and Y2K budgets, there may be a need to summon help come the big night. We have provided some online resources, with more available on the Network World Fusion Web site at http://www.nwfusion. com.

Command centers on call

Prudential will monitor the global progress of Y2K's impact through a set of regional command centers, all feeding information to a main war room. Dec and her staff will see a constantly updated on-screen display of the status of key business applications at each site: when the programs are scheduled to run, when they're being tested, and when they're given a green light or flagged for problems.

At First Union Bank in Charlotte, N.C., staffers have been reassigned from noncritical systems to boost the Y2K team, and each business unit will be watching its respective applications, says Rich Alden, Y2K project manager.

Extra call center representatives will be on duty to handle an expected increase in queries from customers.

MCI WorldCom has grafted onto its trouble-shooting mechanisms new communication links to the Y2K command center, says Andy Sills, senior vice president for Year 2000.

For major customers, MCI WorldCom has created telephone bridges that will let everyone stay in touch. A mix of private and public Web sites will be used to post information.

The biggest companies have been Y2K-ready for weeks, even months. Smaller and some midsize companies, lacking the same resources, have relied on an array of consultants, service providers and other third parties to get them ready.

The large companies have an additional resource: engineers from their key hardware and software vendors. These engineers will be at the customers' sites or can be called directly.

However, some vendors had to be convinced to go this extra mile.

"Some treated this as just part of their standard maintenance contract," Alden says. "With others, who weren't so willing, we had to say, 'Look, fellas: let's see what we can work out here.'"

A last resort will be bringing in a different vendor's equipment, says Mike Ackermann, manager of network planning and design at Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan.

"If our Cisco routers don't work, we'll bring in Bay [Nortel Networks] routers," he says.

The company has figured out which vendors it will fall back on if the worst happens. For instance, it uses Nortel Ethernet switches in the LAN. If those break down when the date rolls over, the company will go out and buy Cisco switches.

Blue Cross doesn't have spare equipment on-site, however, and Ackermann acknowledges that obtaining new equipment from suppliers may take a while. "If all hell breaks loose, we'll have problems for at least a few days," he says.

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Relying on online help

In many cases, large companies are relying on specialized Web sites to help see them through the long night.

First Union will participate with 30 to 40 of the nation's largest banks in a confidential Web site where up-to-the-minute information, problem reports and solutions will be posted.

A number of other industry segments are taking a similar tack. ISPs will share information via a phone bridge and Web-based trouble-shooting system sponsored by the Internet Operators Group, known as IOPS.ORG. IOPS, in turn, will link to the main federal Y2K monitoring point: an information center hosted by the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion.

Smaller companies, though lacking the resources of the giants, still expect the night to pass with few problems.

"There is very little that we believe needs to be done internally - other than a full backup of all our systems - before turning out the lights Dec. 31," says Rick Bullotta, vice president at Lighthammer Software Development in Malvern, Pa.

Others made a point of building their nets with newer, Y2K-compliant products. Arlington Industries, a Libertyville, Ill.-based distributor of imaging supplies, is confident that its 150-node network will work smoothly because all of the company's servers and PCs are less than two years old.

"I'm confident because I built this network," says network administrator Chris Kozlov. "Every piece of hardware and software, I put there."

Kozlov will run his regular year-end backup Dec. 31 and then make sure all PCs are turned off. The servers will stay on, but Kozlov says he is considering turning off the Secure Computing firewall to prevent virus infection from the Internet. He's not planning to stay overnight, but will come in Jan. 1 to test the systems.

Others have arranged to call engineers at their key vendors. Greenebaum, Doll and McDonald, a Louisville, Ky., law firm, will have specific Microsoft and Novell technical support personnel on call all New Year's weekend.

"We have their home phone numbers," says Mandi Turner, manager of network services.