As companies start achieving 2000-compliance on their back-end systems, similar issues now loom on the desktop.
With less than 18 months to go until the clock ticks over, it may seem a little late for businesses to even try and meet this latest challenge, but Viasoft claims its OnMark 2000 suite of tools can get them there in time.
It just needs a little help from its friends in the channel.
"We have a limited window of opportunity with this product so our philosophy will be to roll it out as aggressively as we can," Malcolm Hamilton, Viasoft's channel manager for Australia and New Zealand told ARN.
"Traditionally, we have dealt with mainframe sites and have had a direct sales force for that, but we're not structured to cope with a massive rollout ourselves so in effect we're relying on the channel to become an extension to our sales force."
But while Viasoft will continue to sell OnMark 2000 directly to its major sites, Hamilton was quick to assure potential partners that it will not undermine them.
"In the event of us being in the same site as a reseller, we will back away and support them."
However, Hamilton claims the biggest opportunity for OnMark 2000 channel partners lies in the SME (small and medium enterprise) market.
"SMEs are still relatively untapped for desktop compliance and our tool is the only end-to-end solution available," Hamilton said. "There is a lot of misinformation around that 2000-compliance is a mainframe-only problem.
"One of the things we are doing is to embark on a major promotional campaign to educate SMEs to look at their desktop now, so the opportunity is enormous for resellers to capitalise on a massive, untapped market."
The OnMark 2000 suite comprises:
* OnMark 2000 Survey, enabling businesses to automatically inventory their PC hardware and software assets;* OnMark 2000 Assess which evaluates desktop spreadsheets, databases and data files for Year 2000 problems and fixes compliance issues on the PC basic input/output system (BIOS);* OnMark 2000 Workbench for Excel, providing discovery, impact analysis and resolution of complex Microsoft Excel spreadsheets;* OnMark 2000 Client/Server Workbenches which handle analysis, fixes and verification of C/C++, Visual Basic, PowerBuilder and UNIX shell script applications; and* VIA/AutoTest that functionally tests all changed applications before and after they are returned to production.
Interested resellers should contact Viasoft directly, Hamilton said.
Viasoft
Phone: (02) 9460 0411
