The New York Times
(March 5) - 2 years back, when Congress passed a law to extend daylight saving time by a month, the movement appeared a benign measure that would allow the nation burn a bit more fossil fuel and revel in a bit more sunshine
Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, predicted that kids would rejoice at the possibility of an excess hour of daylight trick-or-treating on Halloween. But there is not any rejoicing among corporate technology managers.
The change takes effect Sunday, as daylight saving time starts three weeks earlier (and ends a week later, on the first Sunday in November). And many organizations are scrambling to reset BlackBerry apparatus, desktop PCs and big data-center computers utilized to automate payrolls, purchasing and manufacturing.
This puts the United States out of sync with the rest of the planet for longer than normal this spring, almost certainly bothering not only computers but also the company and travel schedules of organizations, workers and travelers. Most of Europe goes to daylight saving period two weeks although nearly all of Asia, Africa and South America don't observe daylight saving time in any way.
Any device which has an internal clock looms as a possible problem and must be tweaked to the time change, typically with a software patch. Internal clocks in devices are programmed to get the outdated calendar, which Congress set in 1986.
It is a massive quantity of work to get everything in order, said Kim Stevenson, a vice president at http://javascript"</b>:, a large technology services company. And the do-nothing plan is a high-risk plan.
The daylight-time change, according to tech analysts and executives, amounts to a mini-Y2K. That's a reference into the rush in the late 1990s to alter outdated software, which was unable to recognize dates in the new millennium, 2000 and beyond.
The panic was that computers would go haywire, and there have been warnings of planes falling from the heavens and digital trade grinding to a halt. Billions of dollars were invested to correct the so-called millennium bug, and there was no tide of computer-related disasters.
This time, with prolonged daylight saving period, the problem is subtler. The pitfall is a disturbance of company, as they're programmed to do if the clocks inside all kinds of software and hardware systems don't sync up. In a business world that's increasingly computerized and networked, there might be impacts on everything from stock trading to manufacturing to meeting schedules.
National hotel chains, 1 technology adviser said, have often automated their wake-up call services in a couple of data centers. Having wake-up calls made an hour late for a couple of months would tarnish the reputation for customer service of a hotel.
For customers, the greatest possible impact will be on calendar and e-mail progr like http://javascript"</b>: Outlook, utilized to schedule dentist visits, football practices, day entertainment and other appointments.
The hottest Windows operating system, Vista, is not changed, and for people running Windows XP Service Pack 2, online software updates are pushed out automatically to fix the problem. Microsoft and http://javascript"</b>:; will also be making software patches and directions available on their Internet websites.
That is mainly an annoyance for customers, but it is a major headache for corporate engineering departments, stated Jeffrey Hammond, an analyst at Forrester Research.
For the approximately 7,000 public companies in the USA, Mr. Hammond estimates the total cost of earning computer fixes to deal with the daylight saving period change at greater than $350 million. It is causing a lot of corporate tech people sleepless nights, he said.
The effect extends beyond computers themselves. By way of instance, utilities have begun deploying sophistied time-of-use yards which measure power consumption - or 30-minute intervals. They charge different rates at different times of day -- largely because of commercial clients -- as a portion of the utilities' progr.
Those meters need to be reprogrammed for the daylight saving period change, sending technicians out for on-site visits costing $40 to $200 per year, according to Rick Nicholson, an analyst at the IDC research firm.
The energy savings from extending daylight time aren't great, but could mount, according to research. A report last year from the Energy Department projected savings at four-tenths of a percent each day time three or -- one-hundredths of a percent of annual electricity use. Daylight saving time reduces evening electricity use.
Still, tiny savings annually could accumulate in the long run. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Market, a nonprofit group, estimates that the accumulative advantage through 2020 of longer daylight saving period would be a saving of $4.4 billion and 10.8 million metric tons less carbon spewed into the air.
The 2005 energy bill gives Congress the option of repealing the daylight saving period expansion, if electricity savings aren't achieved.
But there is not any turning back to the tech industry. The major software providers are offering assistance and patches . The biggest software company, Microsoft, has a Web site to help corporate clients and customers, the Daylight Saving Time Help and Support Center, at microsoft.com/dst2007.
That is a struggle for the entire business, said Rich Kaplan, vice president for customer service at Microsoft. But this is largely a nuisance problem. It is not as though you're going to lose any data -- your files, e-mail, digital music or graphics.
Gregor S. Bailar, chief information officer at http://javascript"</b>:, a large bank and credit card company, has headed a lengthy program to acquire all its data centers and PCs ready for the daylight saving period change.
For most people in business, Mr. Bailar stated, the principal problem will be synching calendars and meeting schedules. My advice to the common Luddite would be to affirm, confirm and reconfirm your appointments in April and March, he said.
Or maybe not. Mr. Bailar proposed another alternative: What better excuse to overlook that budget meeting, at least?
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