Peter de Jager, the loud Houston-based Y2K noisemaker, is selling his year2000.com domain name to the highest bidder and moving on. That’s a sure sign that the Y2K mania has come to an end.
And here in Orange County, consultants who spent the last few years exterminating the Y2K bug have not only moved on but expect to do well in ’00.
Sure, there has been a slowdown in systems-implementation consulting, said Steve Hamm, managing partner of the OC office of PricewaterhouseCoopers. But that’s not curbing his firm’s business.
“We’ve really been retooling ourselves as a firm, to be on the front edge of e-business,” Hamm said.
PricewaterhouseCoopers’ former Y2K annihilators have been trained in e-business. The firm recently announced a new product called the “BetterWeb” with a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal. The BetterWeb is similar to the Good Housekeeping seal of approval concept, Hamm said, applied to e-commerce sites.
Costa Mesa-based Information Management Resources Inc. also is retooling for e-business consulting.
The Y2K-business slowdown actually began in the fourth quarter, said Martha Daniel, IMRI’s president and CEO. But that hasn’t meant a slowdown in overall business because her firm has been busy assisting companies,already Y2K compliant,with their e-business strategies, she said. And the companies that stumbled to the deadline on Y2K compliance now are playing catch-up as everyone is trying to figure out how to market themselves in the so-called “new economy.”
Business is also robust in IMRI’s staffing division, Daniel said, due to the ongoing shortage of information technology professionals.
While it’s not surprising the larger consultants emerged from Y2K unscathed,they did the majority of the Y2K work and made lots of money doing it,the smaller consultants, which had less Y2K work, say they expect to do well post-Y2K.
In Sync Computer Solutions, based in Laguna Hills, didn’t solicit extra Y2K business.
“We didn’t want to lay off a bunch of people on Jan. 1,” said Karen Bessette, owner of In Sync. It simply prepared its clients, and so far, so good. Other than a few calls on Y2K-related accounting software glitches, it’s been quiet on the Y2K front and business as usual, she said.
Digital Networks Integration Solutions is ready for post-Y2K spending. It’s a great time to be a consultant, said Tim West, vice president of sales for Santa Ana-based DNIS. “By February and March, we’re going to be drowned in business,” he said.
That’s because small to medium-size businesses discovered they didn’t have a lot of Y2K issues and therefore, didn’t spend a lot of money. Now they’re just waiting for the Y2K OK green light to open up their New Year’s budgets to spring for new fiber networks, West said. The price for fiber has come down so much that it is now affordable for smaller businesses, he said. DNIS also intends to get into the e-commerce arena and says this year is going to be a growth year for the company. n
