Commercial Off-the-Shelf Applications: Resources for Identifying Y2K Compliance

There are a variety of methods by which you can determine the Y2K compliance status of your off-the-shelf application programs. Among these:

Vendors' Web sites
Other vendor contacts (e-mail, phone, fax)
Software tools which report on compliance status
Summary lists of compliance status
Databases of compliance status
Peer help

Related documents

Commercial Off-the-Shelf Applications: An Overview of Y2K Compliance Issues
Commercial Off-the-Shelf Applications: Finding & Resolving Y2K Problems
Y2K Compliance Status of Selected Off-the-Shelf Applications Used at UC Berkeley

Vendors' Web sites

Most vendors of commercial off-the-shelf application programs - and even many vendors of freeware and shareware applications - have Web sites. Many of these Web sites include Y2K compliance information for the vendors' applications.

This is the best place to go for the latest, most complete information regarding the Y2K compliance status of your applications. If at all possible, we encourage you to go directly to your vendor's Web site, rather than relying on second-hand summaries of compliance status.

In most cases, you can visit the vendor's Web site by simply typing www.yourvendornamehere.com into your Web browser. The vendor's site might also be prominently listed in the printed materials, if any, which came with your software. If you can't readily find the vendor's Web site by either of these methods, try searching for the vendor's name, or its company name coupled with the name of one of its prominent applications, via one or more of the major Internet search engines.

One Internet search engine that offers a very handy way to find a vendor's Web site is Google . By typing in the vendor's name (such as "Microsoft" or "Corel") or the name of one of their prominent software products (such as "Excel" or "WordPerfect"), then clicking the "I'm feeling lucky" (!) button, you'll nearly always be taken directly to the home page or the relevant software product page on your vendor's Web site.

Another way you might be able to find your vendor's Web site is to look for a link to that site in a database or summary list of application compliance status.

Once you've found your vendor's Web site, look for a "Year 2000" or "Y2K" link on the site's Home page. If you can't find this, you might also look within the site's "Support", "Technical Support," "Product Support," "Products" (or comparable) sections. Finally, you might try using the Site Map or Search feature to locate the vendor's Y2K-related page(s).

Some challenges you might face with when finding vendors for some applications include:

• Vendors which have gone out of business.
  
  
• Vendors which have merged with or have been acquired by another company.
  
  
• Application programs which have been acquired by a succession of vendors.
  
  
• Application programs which have been renamed or combined with other products.

In many of these cases, you can still locate the current vendor or product by using an Internet search engine to search for the prior vendor or product name.

Some challenges you might face in identifying the compliance status of some application programs include:

• Programs which have been discontinued, and for which no Y2K compliance information is available.
  
  
• Older versions of current programs, which the vendor will not be testing for Y2K compliance.

For suggestions about how to proceed in these latter situations, see
Commercial Off-the-Shelf Applications: Finding & Resolving Y2K Problems
and
Commercial Off-the-Shelf Applications: An Overview of Y2K Compliance Issues .

Other vendor contacts (e-mail, phone, fax)

If the vendor's Web site doesn't offer Y2K compliance status information for some or all of the applications you're concerned about, or if you require additional details beyond those presented on the Web site, you might try contacting the vendor directly via e-mail, phone, or fax. Most vendors provide contact information in a prominent location on their Web site.

If the vendor doesn't have a Web site, and you don't have any other information on how to contact the vendor (such as you might find in a software manual), you might try finding the vendor by calling Directory Information, or by searching using one of the "Yellow Pages"-type business locator search services on the Web. If you don't already have a favorite business locator service, two services you might try are GTE's BigBook and Bell Atlantic's BigYellow .

Software tools which report on compliance status

Some Y2K software tools can scan your computers' disks and not only identify which application programs are installed, but also provide you with reports on the Y2K compliance status of many of these programs.

For lists of some of these tools, see Software Tools for Finding & Resolving Y2K Problems .

For an important discussion of the limitations of these tools, see the section "How can we find Y2K problems in our application programs?" in Commercial Off-the-Shelf Applications: Finding & Resolving Y2K Problems .

Summary lists of compliance status

Some universities, colleges, and other organizations have compilied lists which summarize the Y2K compliance status of certain application programs, and have made these lists publicly available.

We recommend that you do not rely solely on any second-hand summaries of the Y2K compliance status of various products, including any summaries which may appear on this page or elsewhere on this Web site. Instead, you should always check with your products' current vendors (through their Web sites or otherwise) to directly obtain their Y2K compliance statements for your critical products. This way, you'll be sure to obtain: The most up-to-date compliance information. (Sometimes second-hand summaries are out-of-date.) Additional compliance details or qualifications you need to know. (Sometimes second-hand summaries don't include these details.)

You can find UC Berkeley's summary list, which covers selected applications which are in widespread use on this campus and/or which are important to campus business, at Y2K Compliance Status of Selected Off-the-Shelf Applications Used at UC Berkeley .

Many other universities and colleges also maintain Y2K Web sites, and some of these sites include similar summary lists of the Y2K compliance of application programs. To find such lists, you might start with the University of Michigan's Y2K Web site, which maintains a large list of university and college Y2K Web sites .

Databases of compliance status

A number of organizations offer databases that allow you to search for products to determine their Y2K compliance status. Sometimes these databases are specific to a product category, such as biomedical devices, while others may cover a wide variety of products. Some databases include listings for off-the-shelf application programs for microcomputers and workstations. The formats and contents of these databases vary widely.

We recommend that you do not rely solely on any second-hand summaries of the Y2K compliance status of various products, including any summaries which may appear on this page or elsewhere on this Web site. Instead, you should always check with your products' current vendors (through their Web sites or otherwise) to directly obtain their Y2K compliance statements for your critical products. This way, you'll be sure to obtain: The most up-to-date compliance information. (Sometimes second-hand summaries are out-of-date.) Additional compliance details or qualifications you need to know. (Sometimes second-hand summaries don't include these details.)

Some of these databases are made publicly available at no cost. Others may only permit access after payment of a one-time or subscription fee. A third category of databases have been made available for basic lookups at no cost, but require payment of a fee to access their advanced or custom features.

The vast majority of compliance databases merely summarize information obtained from vendors. A few databases may provide compliance data based on the sponsoring organization's own testing results or may add value to vendor-provided information in other ways.

You can locate compliance status databases in a variety of ways. Most Web sites which offer large lists of Y2K-related resources provide links to one or more of these databases. In addition, you can find other compliance databases by searching for them via any of the major Web-based search engines. The following are representative examples of the many compliance status databases which include coverage of application programs for microcomputers and workstations:

The University of California, Davis's
Vendor Compliance Database
Handy compliance information made available by one of our sister UC campuses.

Electronic Data Systems Corporation (EDS)'s
Vendor 2000

The Computer Information Centre (CompInfo)'s
The Year 2000 Date Problem - Support Centre
This United Kingdom-based database provides convenient links to many software vendors in the US and elsewhere.

Y2Kbase.com's
Y2K Compliance Database

The Federal Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council's
Federal Y2K Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Product Database

Peer help

Often, it can be helpful to discuss application compliance issues with other computer support staff or end-users, either on the UC Berkeley campus or elsewhere. Convenient forums for such discussion include user groups, e-mail and Web-based discussion lists, Usenet newsgroups, and the like.

You can find links to many of these forums on Joining Mailing Lists for Peer-to-Peer Y2K Help .