Where's the beef? CD-R software developers contemplate Y2K compliance

Emedia Professional, Oct, 1998 by Marla Misek

By now, anyone with a television or radio, newspaper or magazine subscription, Internet access, or other information delivery service has heard of the dreaded "Y2K" (Year 2000) problem that threatens to put quite a kink in life as we know it. No longer fodder for "techies" only, the Y2K issue affects anyone and anything using a computer, for whatever reason. The problem lies in a shortsighted programming blunder--committed years ago when memory was harder to come by--in which eight-digit dates (e.g., 06. 12. 1973) were encoded as six-digit dates (e.g., 06. 12.73) to conserve space. While the solution proved ingenious in the short-term, it has since created a worldwide furor as computer users have come to realize that when the clock ushers in the new millennium, most current computer systems--not having been programmed to recognize 2000 as an actual date--will instead read every single date field, within all applications, as 00.

The impact of this problem--which could lead to widespread systems dysfunction, or worse, failure--is staggering, since virtually everything is tied to a computer chip these days. Amidst the hype and doomsday proclamations, CD-R software developers are offering mixed reactions to this potential land mine.

According to Paul Ling, president of Creative Digital Research, the problem for CD-R users concerned about Y2K lies not just in the software, "but also in the recorded CD and the operating system." Central to the issue, Ling says, is whether the software is running on a Y2K-compliant operating system; whether the software will record files created in years beginning with both "19" and "20;" whether the CD that is created is accessible by a Y2K-compliant or non-compliant OS; whether the CD-R software will even run on a non-compliant OS; and whether the CD-R software uses the date for scheduling or time stamps. "Since most of our customers are UNIX and corporate users," he continues, "we have been addressing this issue since early on, and incorporated testing for compliance into our normal development process."

In fact, Creative Digital recently expanded and made compliant its line of HyCD products with the release of HyCD Suite in Java and HyCD Publisher Professional for PC and UNIX platforms. Users of older, non-compliant versions of the software have also been accommodated, Ling explains, by making updated versions available on the company's Web site. Furthermore, the company has implemented on its site a Help Desk system that provides 24-hour support to HyCD users. "We will continue to listen to our customers," he says, throughout the millennium transition.

Like Creative Digital, Elektroson has invested a significant amount of time and money into recoding its products for the Year 2000. The ongoing process of making its entire line of GEAR software Y2K-compliant, says Jim Rivas, communications manager for Elektroson, "required recoding, as well as compressive testing." Since then, the company has implemented a comprehensive plan of action for handling the needs of both long-time and newer users. "We are currently offering our users free upgrades for products purchased within a certain timeframe," he explains, "and users of older, noncompliant software may purchase updated versions of GEAR products at a significant discount." Rivas notes that customers may also download "patches" of compliant software at the company's Web site, or call the company to receive them on diskette. "We're doing everything we can to make the transition from this century to the next one as trouble-free as possible for our customers."

While Creative Digital and Elektroson have gone to great lengths to assure Y2K compliance by revising old code, other CD-R software developers have been able to proceed with business as usual. Prassi Software, for one, has boasted that there are "no date issues" with any of its products. In a statement released June 18, Prassi explained that its CD Right!, SCSI Rep, CD Rep, and DVD Rep product families--as well as its ISO Rep toolkit--are Y2K-secure, provided the operating system on which they run is Y2K-compliant. Explains Mark Becknauld, technical support manager at Prassi, "Our software is designed to run on the Windows 95, 98, and NT operating systems, which are all Y2K-compliant. If there is a non-Y2K-compliant release of one of these systems, we are not familiar with it." So unless a non-compliant Windows OS emerges, "our customers will not experience any problems" in the new millennium, he concludes.

CeQuadrat has also responded to "a few requests from end-users, as well as from OEM customers," says Public Relations Director Monika Luetkemeier, by issuing its own Y2K compliance statement. In it, the company notes that after "extensive engineering-level review and tests of our products," CeQuadrat has concluded that its "software and all discs created by CeQuadrat software are fully Year 2000-compliant."

Another company not heavily impacted by Y2K compliance issues is Adaptec. According to David Ulmer, Adaptec's marketing manager for CD-R products, "Adaptec has aggressively examined all of its products"--including DirectCD, Easy CD Creator, Jam, and Toast--and found Y2K to be a non-issue. "For us, it is not a problem. While CD-R software does, in some instances, deal with date fields, we have not uncovered any complications in our code due to the `00'." And while some analysts predict that companies will have to spend billions of dollars to correct the problem, Ulmer attributes any costs incurred by Adaptec to investigating the problem, not to correcting it.