While doing some wee hours Internet reading, Habeck discovered that someone else held a patent on the methodology used in the Resuscitator2000 tool. Given the extent of the work UPI was doing for their first Resuscitator2000 customers — Campbell Soup and 3M — and the rapid growth of the company to support these and future clients, any kind of a patent infringement issue would spell financial ruin.

The next morning Habeck called Turn of the Century Solution (TOCS) to report UPI’s unknowing patent infringement. Alan Amenta, president of TOCS, saw an opportunity to partner with Habeck rather than ruin him. TOCS had developed Y2K compliance tools and utilities to serve users on the MVS platform, but had nothing to offer those clients who also needed to bring their AS/400s into century compliance. UPI filled that niche.

The TOCS patented methodology takes advantage of the fact that calendars 28 years apart are identical with respect to day of the week and leap year. This methodology permits programs to process dates falling in the new century as if the century never changed.

Relative to the other two predominant century compliance approaches — date-field expansion and windowing — the 28-year approach offers some distinct advantages inherent in its simplicity. One is that century compliance is achieved without introducing changes to the structure of the database or the logic of the code, such as that required to expand all database year fields from two digits (YY) to four digits (YYYY). The net effect is that this approach significantly reduces the resources needed for post-remediation testing.

Another advantage of the 28-year approach is that users require no retraining to operate a post-remediated system. The 28 years are encrypted internally, then decrypted before date values are presented to a user, such as on a display panel or a report.

Habeck admitted it has been a long and sometimes exasperating journey to fully develop the Resuscitator2000 services that have since been used by multiple enterprises, including divisions of 3M, Campbell Soup, P&G, Textron, Pfizer and Revlon.

The 28-year century repair concept was fairly simple, but like most R&D projects, getting all the details right while staying within the budget was another matter. Habeck reports that executives at 3M and Campbell Soup had their patience stretched quite a few times.

Ultimately, the grueling R&D process paid off this spring when Resuscitator2000 was finally ready to process code at full speed. Since then, a favorable learning curve has allowed UPI to process each new project more efficiently.

In order to help IS managers quantify their Y2K repair project, UPI provides a fixed-price proposal for all remediation work based on the results of a Scope & Scale Study analysis.

Although the company does not claim that Resuscitator2000 will catch every I/O operation, the tool has proven highly reliable. "The corporate version of 3M's BPCS code was delivered and put through man months of intensive regression testing," according to Habeck. "The result was something less than two dozen errors…quite a few of which were traceable to library list issues."

No Y2K repair tool is flawless. "One nice thing about Resuscitator2000 errors," Habeck said, "is that they are easy to spot. If an analyst reports that something is 56 years overdue, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what the problem is. Date-field expansion errors can be exceptionally subtle and, perhaps, never detected."

To help clients perform pre/post-remediation regression testing, Unbeaten Path recommends a highly specialized application of AutoTester software. AutoTester streamlines the process of developing testing scripts on the client’s pre-repair software.

Resuscitator2000 has now been rigorously tested and proven reliable, permitting UPI to offer a money-back guarantee of satisfaction. Standing behind that guarantee is what Habeck calls "an AS/400 dream team."

"My goal was to assemble the best technical talent possible," he says. "I sought the brightest and most experienced people right from the start. That core of excellence drew others of high caliber. The technical team roster now numbers 28, each with in-depth AS/400 experience."

A key ingredient in landing top technical talent has been the company's virtual office paradigm. A growing number of people prefer to work from home, eliminating the job commute and enjoying the benefits of flexible work hours.

The company's Systems Engineering group has developed a cost-effective network that allows technical staff to work from their homes with no response-time compromise. UPI's network is proving to be reliable and far more affordable than constantly expanding into new leased space to cope with the doubling and re-doubling of staff size.

Working hard and smart on a good idea doesn’t necessarily translate into business success. UPI has been fortunate to overcome a number of growth and development hurdles. Despite the uncertain early times, though, they now seem firmly planted on the road of success.