Page 125 - A Life - my Live - my path

12. HORIZON ICT

In 1997, we sold 3 licenses. Our business picked up so well
that in 1998, we sold 11 licenses, and in 1999, 12. Our sales
rose from 47 MFB (1.2 M€) in 1996 to 104 MFB (2.6 M€) in
1999. Our situation was very good, and our cash flow
excellent.
We had therefore spent almost two years consolidating
the company. At the end of the 1 quarter of 1999,
st
I organized a meeting with two of my managers to analyse
our medium and long-term situation. The conclusion was
that our very favourable position with HI-Account was
essentially due to the needs created by the transition to the
year 2000 and the changeover to the euro.

Comment: changeover to the year 2000 and the
euro
The Y2K problem, also known as the "Y2K bug", was linked
to the structure of the "date" field in files that had been
created right from the start of computer programming in
the late 1950s and early 1960s. Knowing that memory
space was very expensive, no computer scientist at the
time could reasonably think that his programs would still
be operational 40 years later. The "dates" fields were, in
fact, defined dd/mm/yy. This 2-position structure for the

year made it easy to define dates for the years 60, 61... 98,
99, and everyone understood that the years 1960, 1961...
1998, 1999 were represented. However, for the incoming
"00", the programs could no longer differentiate
- unambiguously - between 1900 and 2000.
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