On November 4, 2007, Daylight Saving Time ("DST") in most of the United States and Canada will end one week later than last year. Hyperion does not anticipate any major problems with the "fall back" portion of DST as we had addressed the issue early in the year prior to the March 11th, 2007 "spring forward" date. Additionally, the March 9, 2008 "spring forward" should proceed three weeks early as scheduled without any issue.

Even so, everyone should be observant of computer clocks and electronic time stamps between the last Sunday in October and first Sunday in November to catch any inconsistencies before they result in major scheduling problems. Any calendar oddities should be reported immediately so that the proper patches can be applied to affected systems.

Many small businesses either ignored this year's extended DST period thinking it was a trivial issue and would only result is a few weeks of annoyance while clocks need to be manually adjusted. The fact is, time synchronization is a critical facet of any computerized system and the DST schedule is integral to proper functionality. Attempting to resolve the asynchronous state manually during the extended DST period is not actually possible due to various interdependent applications not relying on the same database of DST schedule information; even though you might manually adjust Windows to reflect the correct time, this will not translate to Outlook and incorrect time stamps will result.

In many cases, Hyperion can make the necessary changes to accommodate the new DST schedules quickly and inexpensively as it remains a very minor task for the majority of small businesses. In other cases, more substantial efforts may be required. Systems and applications may need to be updated directly, while in others, the application may simply inherit the date and time information from the underlying system on which it resides. Given the broad range of technology in use today, and the integration of systems between customers, vendors, and partners, a full systems inventory should determine what actions need to be taken to mitigate the affects of DST 2007.

Contact Hyperion today to schedule a Technology Assessment and ensure your systems' accuracy and continued functionality.