Imminent Changes to U.S. Daylight Saving Time Will Have Global Business Implications

Few organisations have taken steps to address the possible impact says Gartner

STAMFORD, Conn., January 31, 2007 — The planned changes to the beginning and ending of Daylight Saving Time (DST) in the United States in March will have significant implications for organisations around the world; according to Gartner Inc. However Gartner’s discussions with clients have revealed that few organisations have any formalised risk assessment and remediation programme in place to address the potential impact of this time modification.  Disruptions at an IT infrastructure and application level are likely as a result and could include interruptions to calendaring applications, billing applications and security programmes in addition to affecting travel and trading schedules.

The changes, which are effective from 1^st March 2007 and are one of the many provisions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, will mean that U.S. DST will begin almost one month earlier on the second Sunday in March (instead of the first Sunday in April) and end on the first Sunday in November (instead of the last Sunday of October). This means, for example, that between March 11^th and March 25^th this year, there will be a four-hour time difference between London and New York, instead of the normal five-hour difference, and a five-hour difference between Frankfurt, Paris, Madrid or Milan and New York instead of their normal six-hour difference.

According to Gartner, the impact will extend outside of the United States and any organisation that interacts with U.S. business partners will also need to undertake a review of their time-related exposures which could include:

Calendaring applications (including BlackBerry-style devices synching with an e-mail server) showing incorrect recurring meeting schedules

• Incorrect times for arrivals and departures within the travel industry
• Bank transaction errors, manifesting in late payments
• Trading applications executing purchases and sales at the incorrect time
• Missed deadlines for admissions and other time-sensitive enrolment programs
• Auctions ending earlier, impacting late bids
• Cell phone and other tariff billing applications incorrectly charging peak rates during non-peak times
• Batch recovery, rollback and job scheduling processes operating off incorrect journal timestamps
• Security programs improperly denying access to IT resources

Gartner maintained that organisations that plan ahead and protect their applications will be best placed to weather the potential storm.  “This is a minor problem compared to the big code changes required in the recent past for issues like Y2K or the Euro conversion.  However, significant business damage and liabilities could occur from applications performing their processing at the incorrect time if organisations do nothing,” said Will Cappelli, Research Vice President at Gartner.

As the date for the change approaches, more and more patches to safeguard applications are becoming available and Gartner advised organisations to check with vendors on a regular basis regarding relevant patching programmes. 

Mr Cappelli said that most of the top IT suppliers have or are preparing patches for supported products but are downplaying the effect, fearing repeats of Y2K level panic.  “Few vendors have centralised repositories of patch and related information although patches for major operating systems and other infrastructure components appear to be readily available,” he said. 

There will however be instances where a standard patch is not sufficient.   Mr Cappelli cited the example of time stamped data which already exists in many of these at-risk applications and is unlikely to be updated by operating system (OS)-level patches but instead will require an application-specific patch.  In this instance, new entries will be correct, but - for example - existing meeting schedules that were entered before the OS, Java, etc. patch was applied and occur in-between the new DST and old DST cutover times will still be wrong.

Complicating matters further is the fact that not all products will be supported and ready-made patches will not therefore be available.  Where patches are not available, for example for products that are no longer supported,

Gartner said that organisations need to determine whether there are manual workarounds and if not, consider accelerating migration to more current versions.

Mr. Cappelli also offered some advice to enterprises that have yet to consider the issue. “With so little time available to complete the work, it is inevitable that most organizations will experience a glitch or two. So at the very least organizations should run a communications program for all staff well in advance of the change and support service managers should ensure that they are fully staffed on March 11 and 12,” he concluded.

Additional information and recommendations surrounding the 2007 Daylight Savings Time change are available in the Gartner report “2007 Daylight Saving Time Effects and Recommendations.” The report is available on Gartner’s Web site at www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=500284&subref=simplesearch.

Contact:


Carina Forsling
Gartner
+46 8 624 6324
carina.forsling@gartner.com


About Gartner:
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the indispensable partner to 60,000 clients in 10,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 4,000 associates, including 1,200 research analysts and consultants in 80 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.