What Was Y2K Problem – Burning Issues

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EVENING OF 31^STDECEMBER 1999

At the dawn of the Year 2000, as people hoped for a new world, the software industry around the world was in deep apprehension.
The engineers across the world were working around the clock as the economies struggled with a trivial yet powerful software bug.
Y2K, also known as the millennium bug.
It was the inability of the computer to differentiate between the years 1900 and 2000.

When the software engineers started programming the computers in the 1960s, storage and memory were an expensive
Disk space could cost upwards of $100 per kilobyte.

So programmers were under pressure to reduce the amount of memory their programs took up.
One cost-cutting measure they discovered was reducing a 4 digit year to only 2
This means the year, 2000 and the year 1900 will both be represented as 00 in the system.
Even though the price of memory went down and computer space opened up to accommodate the full four digits of the calendar year,
This shorthand persisted in programs all over the world, from defense department computers to power utilities to toasters.
In 1993, Computer world magazine became one of the first harbingers of the Y2K apocalypse.
It published an article titled Doomsday 2000

This could wreak havoc with program in unexpected ways-
Causing data loss, software errors, or even render a computer
Credit cards could stop working.
Bank records could vanish.
Vital services like air traffic control, power utilities, hospitals, and national defense systems could fail.

Fixing the Y2K bug would require the cooperation of corporations, governments, and institutions from around the globe.
It would take a painstaking amount of effort to fix or replace every single piece of faulty software.
It would cost billions. And they only had 7 years to do it.

USA and UK worked around the globe to fix the issue.
The Australian government invested millions of dollars to address the issue.
Countries like Russia did not address the issue and believed that it will not cause any major disruption.
Nevertheless, an estimated 600 billion dollars globally was invested in the correction of the Y2K bug.
And when the clock turned to midnight on December 31,1999 . . . civilization didn’t collapse.

In Japan, alarms sounded outside a nuclear power plant and radiation monitoring equipment failed.
Thermostats malfunctioned in an apartment complex in South Korea.
In Australia, bus ticket machines
In the US, lottery machines failed in Delaware.

As the economy in the USA looked for the workforce to fix the problem,
India tapped the opportunity to provide the biggest pool of engineers.
Post-independence, the country had invested in human resource and this resource came handy to resolve the issue.
This also took Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) to another level.
India provided low-cost force of highly qualified engineers.
Many Indian companies like Infosys and TCS strengthened their base in the IT.
Many cities like Hyderabad and Bangalore blossomed into IT hubs
Compared to 1.2% in 1998, the IT sector in India currently contributes to 7.7% of the GDP.
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