IU mission-critical data is 'Y2K ready' on central systems

By Greg Moore

University Information Technology Services (UITS) recently announced the Year 2000 readiness of IU's central information systems. On March 7, the UITS Year 2000 team completed migrating all "mission-critical" business applications into production. These support such systems as Bursar, Registration, Grades, Transcripts, and Financial Aid and join the Financial and Human Resources systems as "Year 2000 ready."

"This marks quite a milestone in our year 2000 project," said Dennis Cromwell, director of University Information Systems and IU's Year 2000 project coordinator. "This was the largest and last of several production migrations. We have been working toward this date since 1996 when our year 2000 efforts started."

Moving the re-coded programs into production has been a success, said Linda Sieboldt, team manager of institutional data, Year 2000. "We have experienced very few problems throughout this project. We closed about 20 problems this month related to the large implementation and most of these were dealt with in the same day. We think these small problems are indicative of those we may experience in January 2000."

The latest program move on March 7 accounted for 569 programs. Sieboldt credited UITS staff and other administrative departments for a successful implementation. "This last move required an enormous amount of coordination across many UITS divisions, IU departments and campuses. A lot of the credit for the success of the project has to be given to the departments that have dedicated many hours to Year 2000 testing and to all of the UITS staff who have worked on this project for the past 24 months," said Sieboldt.

UITS will continue testing for readiness over the next few months. "We know that many hours of testing and validation are still ahead, but we are now confident that IU will be ready for the Year 2000 challenge," noted Cromwell. "The ability to achieve this Year 2000 readiness is directly related to the dedication of the UITS staff and the teamwork exhibited by many areas of the university."