System status: nominal

The Deadline You Can See Coming Is Never The One That Gets You

Y2K was fine because a very large number of people spent three years quietly making it fine. The deadlines that catch a business out are the ones nobody reports, like a software version that stops receiving updates or a certificate that lapses.

The deadlines that have your name on them

• Software and equipment that stops receiving security updates on a published date, which is a date you can plan around the moment somebody writes it down.
• Certificates and domain renewals that lapse quietly and take a service down with them on a Sunday.
• A standard your customers or your insurer hold you to, which adds requirements on its own timetable.
• CMMC, if you sell into the defense supply chain, which runs to a phased timetable that does not care when you started looking at it.

What actually happened

The planes stayed up

Because a very large number of people had spent three years going through code line by line. Afterward everybody decided it had been a fuss about nothing, which is what success looks like from the outside, and it's why the next boring deadline is harder to get funded.

The work never stopped

Support end dates and certificate renewals kept coming. Y2K was one date that applied to everybody at once. These are hundreds of dates that apply to you specifically, which makes them easier to miss and cheaper to fix.

How this goes

1. We build the list, sorted by date

Every piece of software and equipment you run, with the date its support ends next to it. Most businesses have never seen this on one page, and the list is yours whatever you decide.

2. The dates go in a calendar

The calendar belongs to the business instead of to one person, so the next date becomes a scheduled purchase.