Get out of the dark with looming Daylight Savings Time changes

The times, they are a-changin'. Daylight Savings Time, that is. And now is the time to get ready, while you still have that extra hour available.

Daylight Saving Time (DST) was extended by four weeks courtesy of the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed by your congressional representatives in July, 2005. Starting this year, DST begins three weeks earlier (on March 11) and ends one week later (Nov. 4). Around the world, some countries are aligning with the new calendar. Some aren't. Some may, but perhaps not this year.

Sure, it's a mess, but is it Y2K all over again, where we were warned that at the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, 2000, we'd all fall off the edge of the earth? Probably not. But, certain mission-critical systems and applications, including medical and industrial processes could exhibit some strange behavior. And if you have security applications running that still think it's 7 a.m. when it actually is 8 a.m., doors and gates may remain locked when they should be open.

Vendors of technology products started providing tools not long after the law was enacted. And most of them are sitting idle. Indeed, it seems very few people are even aware of the change. This time, change does not come from within. Here's a rundown of some key players.

Microsoft has set up the Daylight Saving Time Help and Support Center here. Lots of applications are affected, perhaps most notably Outlook, Exchange Server, and of course the various desktop clients. Many others are on the list, which you'd better check twice. Vista, thankfully, was built to correctly self-adjust.

Microsoft's DST Help center contains a trainload of detailed of information about applications and platforms (both supported and no longer supported), downloads and patches required, and procedures to follow. There's even more information in a Microsoft Knowledge Base article " How to configure daylight saving time for the United States in 2007," located here.

IBM's Daylight Saving Time alert, located here, has a dropdown list of affected product areas, including point-of-sale, servers, and storage. And beating Microsoft at its own game, IBM has even posted "Daylight Saving Time Changes: Executive Presentation" a downloadable PowerPoint file.

Sun Microsystems is also ready with tools regarding Java platforms and applications. Older versions of the Java Runtime Environment don't support the new DST scheme and should be updated. In instances where that's not possible, Sun has a utility available that will modify the time zone data in JRE 1.4 or later. Sun's info is located here.

Similarly, Hewlett-Packard has updates for its HP JDK and SDK products, located here.

Oracle isn't making DST information easy to find, but you can start here or here. The only information I could find on Apple's Web site is various updates for specific versions of Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server.

At Novell, plenty of information can be found regarding the impact on SUSE Linux, GroupWise, and other products. Like Microsoft and IBM, Novell has set up a central repository. It's located here.

So that's a start to get you thinking about the changes that are likely to be needed on your own systems and those of your customers. Time's a-wasting away.