BCS Edinburgh Branch

Going Live with the Euro

Charles Brewer, NaMax Limited

Wednesday 20 January at 6.30pm

St Mary's Land, Moray House Institute of Education

The millennium problem may be characterised as a deep, but narrow problem - it reaches great depths, but only in a few areas of a business, its systems. By contrast, the euro is a wide one, touching all areas of a business but going to little depth in most. Similarly, the Y2K issue can be solved by a single requirement - make all year dates four digit, but questions raised by the euro have many solutions. Thirdly, the millennium problem (really) only happens once; euro 'events' happen continuously from 1 January 1999, to whenever the UK finally abolishes Sterling (even if it never does!).

The paper will explore some of the following issues:

  1. The City of London as a case study - what to do and what not to do
  2. IT and the business - how to structure your project for (some chance of) success
  3. Myths, rubbish and paying for the euro
  4. The five euro-IT options: and two non-options
  5. The irrelevance or harmfulness of the political dimension.
There will also be discussion of how well, or badly, the introduction of the currency has gone so far ...