May 1998
.

As one of Sweden’s largest paper and forestry companies, MoDo specializes in the generation of newsprint, paperboard, fine and office paper. The company is divided into six business areas spread over a number of counties in Europe. With some 9,600 employees and SKr 22.7 billion (~$4.5 billion CDN) turnover in 1998, they are truly a huge company with outstanding computing needs.

Since 1996, the company has been working on its Year 2000 readiness – a huge undertaking for a company of this size. MoDo contacted ISMG Inc. in order to develop a system for cataloging all affected and potentially affected products. This system would allow them to run reports to determine which parts of the company were affected by the Y2K bug and what steps were being taken to remedy the situation.
.

The primary objective in developing the software for MoDo was to ensure that all Y2K related problems would be uncovered before January 1st, 2000. This required not only finding out that a certain product was not compliant, but also that the “system” in which the product played a part was also affected. This was accomplished by creating a hierarchy system in the software that allowed MoDo to attach products to other products to create “systems”. The software would also have to store information on any suppliers and projects involved in remedying the incompatible product/system.

Due to the size of the corporation, MoDo was facing the difficult task of an international software deployment. This is always a difficult task, but MoDo also faced the quickly approaching Y2K deadline.
.

.By developing the software as a “web application”, ISMG Inc. solved a number of problems for MoDo. Firstly, the application would have the strength needed to service the large number of users would use it. Secondly, as a web application, any computer running a web browser that was connected to the corporate Intranet would have access to it immediately with no need for installation on each workstation. Finally, by building the software on top of Microsoft™ SQL Server, the Y2K readiness information was contained in a high-performance RDBMS that would allow for quick and concise reporting to ensure corporate Y2K compliance.
.

ISMG used a wide variety of Microsoft technologies to build the Y2K software, including Microsoft NT Server 4.0, Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0 and SQL Server 6.5. In addition, Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) objects were written to extend the capabilities of IIS4. These COM objects allowed IIS to handle the large number of users and stringent reporting needs.
.

The Y2K application is expected to help MoDo determine their Y2K readiness.
.

Back to the ISMG Case Studies listing.