Software Company Memo:

To:     All Staff Members
CC:    Management
From: Development
Date:  11/01/99

NEW SOFTWARE MEMO:

This memo is to announce the development of a new firm-wide software system. We are currently building a data center that will contain all firm data that is Year 2000 compliant. The program is referred to as the "Millennia Year Application Software System" (MYASS). Next Monday at 9:00 there will be a meeting in which I will show MYASS to everyone. We will continue to hold demonstrations throughout the month so that all employees will have an opportunity to get a good look at MYASS.

As for the status of the implementation of the program, I have not addressed the networking aspects, so currently only one person at a time can use MYASS. This restriction will be removed after MYASS expands. Several people are using the program already, and have come to depend on it. Just this morning I walked into a subordinate's office and was not surprised to find that he had his nose buried in MYASS.

I've noticed that some of the less technical personnel are somewhat afraid of MYASS. Just last week, when asked to enter some information into the program, I had a secretary say to me: "I'm a little nervous, since I've never put anything in MYASS before." I volunteered to help her through her first time, and when we were through, she admitted that it was relatively painless, and she was actually looking forward to doing it again. She went so far as to say that, after using SAP and Oracle, she was ready to kiss MYASS.

I know there are concerns over the virus that was found in MYASS upon initial installation, but I am pleased to say the virus has been eliminated and we were able to save MYASS. In the future, however, protection will be required prior to entering MYASS.

We planned this database to encompass all information associated with the business. So, as you begin using the program, feel free to put anything you want into MYASS. As MYASS grows larger, we envision a time when it will be commonplace to walk by an office and see a manager hand a paper to an employee and say, "Here, stick this in MYASS".

This program has already demonstrated great benefit to the company during recent OSHA and EPA audits. After requesting certain historical data the agency representatives were amazed at how quickly we provided the information. When asked how the numbers could be retrieved so rapidly our Environmental Manager proudly stated: "Simple, I just pulled them out of MYASS".