Tag: advice

Early this morning, I posted on the Microsoft Corporate blog about our efforts to inform our customers and partners on our activities related to the end of daylight saving time in the Russian Federation, a change noted earlier this year. For our customers and partners worldwide, this means there are some things to be aware of and in some cases work to do to prepare for this change. (long link: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2011/09/29/don-t-turn-back-the-clock-microsoft-provides-resources-for-change-in-daylight-saving-time-in-russia.aspx).

As you may know from my prior posts on the subject, Russia has decided to cancel daylight saving time (DST) in the country and will not “fall back” to Russian Standard Time this fall. The country will no longer have to make the twice-a-year changes to their clocks in the future. And while the elimination of DST directly affects those living in Russia, given the size and impact of the Russian market, the ramifications are global. At Microsoft, we’re stepping up work with our customers and partners to address the impact on users’ computers and servers.

By the way, an important note:  the rules for daylight saving time remain in effect and the same in the United States and Canada, as well as for many other countries that use DST and “Summer Time” over the summer months. The latest changes are noted in my post here, and cals out the exception that is Newfoundland (as the DST start time and end time for Newfoundland Standard Time [Display Name “(UTC-3:30) Newfoundland”] has been updated from 12:01 A.M. to 2:00 A.M.).

In the post, there’s information for consumers (chances are they already have the needed updates via WU)…

So what should you do to make sure that your computers are ready for the change?

If you use Microsoft Update on your PC at home, chances are you’re already covered. The latest update – the August 2011 Cumulative Time Zone Update for Windows – may already be installed on your PC if you have turned on Automatic Update in Windows. This ensures you’ll get the latest security and other important updates from Microsoft automatically. This latest update includes the changes for Russia as well as other worldwide changes (including Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Fiji, Samoa and Newfoundland). If you’re not sure if the update has been applied, visit the Microsoft Update site for more information.

If someone manages your network at work, it’s likely the needed updates are schedule to be deployed to your computers and devices, if they haven’t been installed already.

For IT professionals managing PCs, servers and Microsoft software installations, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/time for more details. Also, visit the support websites of any other software companies to see if you need to apply any updates. It’s not just Microsoft software that may require updates.

The calls to action for IT Pros to visit the corporate site for more details and to attend one of the upcoming webcasts to help prepare for these changes and to learn more. We’re offering a series of new webcasts to help customers and organizations preparing for daylight saving time, particularly these new changes in Russia, beginning on Oct. 3rd. This is part of our “step-by-step” program on making the DST transition. Geared toward IT professionals, we’ll walk through a general overview of DST and the impacts and solutions for Windows, Outlook and Exchange. To find a list of these upcoming webcasts, visit http://www.microsoft.com/time.

Webcasts start up on October 3rd and will offer more guidance to IT Pros on the impacts and solutions for many of our software and services offerings. For more information on DST and a list of the upcoming webcasts, visit Microsoft Daylight Saving Time Help and Support Center (http://www.microsoft.com/time). There you’ll find links to updates for various products in support affected by this change, as well as other various changes to DST offsets and time zones around the world. Additionally, the team in Microsoft Russia provides specific details and guidance in country at http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cp_dst/ru. 

 

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Check out Microsoft KB article 2570791 for the August 2011 cumulative time zone update for Windows operating systems, just posted this week. (This update supersedes and replaces update 2443685, which was released in December 2010. This update also includes additional time zone changes released as hotfixes after update 2443685 was published.)

The August 2011 DST cumulative update contains revisions for the coming changes in Russia as noted in my previous post, with updates to the UTC offsets and removes DST for the affected Russian time zones as follows:

 

Time Zone	Old	New
Russian Standard Time	(UTC +3:00) Moscow, St Petersburg, Volgograd	(UTC +4:00) Moscow, St Petersburg, Volgograd
Ekaterinburg Standard Time	(UTC +5:00) Ekaterinburg	(UTC +6:00) Ekaterinburg
N. Central Asia Standard Time	(UTC +6:00) Novosibirsk	(UTC +7:00) Novosibirsk
North Asia Standard Time	(UTC +7:00) Krasnoyarsk	(UTC +8:00) Krasnoyarsk
North Asia East Standard Time	(UTC +8:00) Irkutsk	(UTC +9:00) Irkutsk
Yakutsk Standard Time	(UTC +9:00) Yakutsk	(UTC +10:00) Yakutsk
Vladivostok Standard Time	(UTC +10:00) Vladivostok	(UTC +11:00) Vladivostok
Magadan Standard Time	(UTC +11:00) Magadan	(UTC +12:00) Magadan

A new Windows time zone was created, Kaliningrad Standard Time [Display Name “(UTC+3:00) Kaliningrad”]:
with the display name “(UTC+3:00) Kaliningrad.” This time zone does not observe daylight saving time.

It also includes revisions to the following time zones:

The following changes were made since the previous Windows cumulative time zone update:

• Turkey Standard Time:
  A new Windows time zone was created: Turkey Standard Time. The display name is “(UTC+2:00) Istanbul.” The government of Turkey has decided to change the 2011 DST schedule. It will start on Monday March 28 instead of Sunday March 27.
  “Istanbul” was removed from the display name of the “(UTC+2:00) Athens, Bucharest, Istanbul” time zone.
• Egypt Standard Time [Display Name “(UTC+2:00) Cairo”]:
  The government of Egypt has canceled daylight saving time.
• Pacific SA Standard Time [Display Name “(UTC-4:00) Santiago”]:
  Sets the 2011 DST start date to occur in August and the end date to occur in May. 
• Morocco Standard Time [Display Name “(UTC) Casablanca”]:
  Sets the 2011 DST end date to occur in July.
• Fiji Standard Time [Display Name “(UTC+12:00) Fiji”]:
  Sets the 2011 DST end date to occur on the first Sunday in March.
• Samoa Standard Time [Display Name “(UTC-11:00) Samoa”]:
  Sets the 2011 DST end time to occur one hour later.

Also note: The DST start time and end time for Newfoundland Standard Time [Display Name “(UTC-3:30) Newfoundland”] has been updated  from 12:01 A.M. to 2:00 A.M.

For more information about how daylight saving time changes may affect other Microsoft products, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 914387  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914387/) How to configure daylight saving time for Microsoft Windows operating systems.

So what should you do to make sure that your computers are ready for the change?

Most applications and services reference the underlying Windows operating system for their date and time related rules, with some exceptions. We outline the various software updates to select Microsoft products (including various releases of the Microsoft Windows operating systems, Microsoft Office and other applications) on the Microsoft Daylight Saving Time Help and Support Center. There, we have information and links to updates for various products in mainstream and extended support affected by this change, as well as other various changes to DST offsets and time zones around the world.

If you use Microsoft Update on your PC at home, chances are you’re already covered. The latest update – the August 2011 Cumulative Time Zone Update for Windows – may already be installed on your PC if you have turned on Automatic Update in Windows. This ensures you’ll get the latest security and other important updates from Microsoft automatically. This latest update includes the changes for Russia as well as other worldwide changes (including Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Fiji, Samoa and Newfoundland). If you’re not sure if the update has been applied, visit the Microsoft Update site for more information.

If someone manages your network at work, it’s likely the needed updates are schedule to be deployed to your computers and devices, if they haven’t been installed already.

For IT professionals managing PCs, servers and Microsoft software installations, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/time for more details. Also, visit the support websites of any other software companies to see if you need to apply any updates. It’s not just Microsoft software that may require updates. Additionally, for the change in Russia, we provide specific details and guidance in country at http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cp_dst/ru.

While Microsoft’s Services infrastructure will be updated to reflect DST changes, it’s important that your computers — both clients and servers that interact with these services — should have the latest Windows cumulative updates for DST and time zone changes applied in order to ensure data integrity.

A holiday nod of thanks to the good folks across our company working on our effort to help manage time (particularly in daylight saving time and time zone changes) — documented and followed at http://www.microsoft.com/time and over at the blog at http://blogs.technet.com/dst2007 — and to the folks coordinating the efforts on our daylight saving time and time zone updates and releases for current products across the various product groups at Microsoft.  As noted, this is a tough job, to say the least.

Tags: Windows, Microsoft, Daylight Saving Time, Daylight Savings Time, RSS, DST, Russia; 17,400,000; 23,100,000 (up ~5M results from the last time I Binged it)

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[Note: please see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mthree/archive/2011/08/11/dst-081111.aspx for the released Windows Update for August 2011…]

 

Remember when I wondered out loud about Russia abolishing daylight saving time?

Well, I do. We’ve been following this quite closely at Microsoft, and have seen the news updates.  I have really improved my understanding of the Cyrillic alphabet in the last few months.

From the “more detail than you want to know department”: this Bill went through what’s called the first reading with their legislature (the State Duma) this past week (April 19) and will likely be signed into law within the next 14-20 days, and effective 60 days after it’s official publication. But our engineering and services teams are already anticipating this change.

As we understand it, Russia will not “fall back” and revert to the established Russian Standard time zones this fall. Instead, the country will remain on perpetual “Summer Time”. From a technical standpoint, this can be a challenging way to handle a permanent transition away from DST. This will be known, I think, as “Decree time” but effectively will be Russia’s new standard time.

We also know that other countries – including Ukraine and Belarus – may follow Russia’s lead in their move to abolish DST. I expect that as Russia enacts this Bill into law we will see other countries in the region follow suit.

[Revised 8/11/2011] Russia has signed this into law, and we’ve released KB article 2570791 for the August 2011 cumulative time zone update for Windows operating systems. See this post for more details.]

A few interesting facts on DST:

As you may know, daylight saving time was originally proposed and adopted as a response to energy conservation early in the 20th century. It was repealed after World War I in 1919, and then reinstated by the Uniform Time Act of 1966 in the U.S.

Originally, a report by the California Energy Commission in 2001 (available here) concluded that both Daylight Saving Time would probably save marginal amounts of electricity. At the time, California considered adopting DST throughout the year to address the electricity problems in the state in 2000. For the proposed Summer Double DST, the study suggested that the state would “save hundreds of millions of dollars because it would shift electricity use to low demand (cheaper) morning hours and decrease electricity use during higher demand hours.”

The Energy Commission has also published a report titled “The Effect of Early Daylight Saving Time on California Electricity Consumption” in May, 2007. The report concluded that DST had little or no effect on energy consumption in California. A more recent study from the University of Santa Barbara (available at http://www.nber.org/papers/w14429) concluded that there is little evidence that DST actually saves energy, and in the terms of the study, may actually increase residential electricity demand. The study focused on residential electricity demand over a three year period, and concluded that energy consumption actually increased approximately 1 percent during DST, and as much as 2 to 4 percent in the fall. The authors also hypothesize that the impact of the energy increase during DST would likely be higher in other parts of the U.S.

Health concerns also play a role, as recent studies showed an increase in heart attacks, sleep disorders and other problems associated with time changes. As I noted in this article, the Russian government originally considered abolishing daylight saving time in the country as there are serious negative impacts on people’s health, calling out how the time changes attributed to up to 70,000 premature deaths a year in Russia alone. They cited “medical emergency calls increasing by 12% in the first two weeks after each change, suicide rate jumping 66%, accident rate rising by 29%, heart attack rates – by 75%.” This research was also supported by a Swedish study referenced here.

So, that’s all nice, but what’s Microsoft doing about this change?

We’re working hard at Microsoft on this change at many different levels.  As past readers of this blog will know, most applications and services reference the underlying Windows OS for their TZ and DST rules, with some exceptions. This change in Russia has the potential for worldwide impacts on time references for multinational customers. Updates will be important not only for users in Russia but for connected systems around the world.

As such, our Windows team that follows DST and TZ changes globally will provide guidance to all product and services teams on the changes as the measure is formalized and put into law. We will announce more details on our support and updates to our products and services in the upcoming weeks and ensure that the changes are represented into our regularly scheduled Windows OS updates for DST and time zones.

[Added 05312011]  At this time, in preparations for the changes to the UTC offsets and elimination of DST in Russia, we plan to include the changes for the Windows Daylight Saving Time Cumulative Update, scheduled to be published in August, 2011. We will also include a roll-up of DST hotfix changes released during 2011, including those for Fiji, Samoa, Turkey, Chile, Egypt, Morocco and Newfoundland. See this post for more details. While Microsoft’s Services infrastructure will be updated to reflect these DST changes, it’s important that your computers — both clients and servers that connect to and interact with these services — should have the Windows DST updates applied in order to ensure data integrity.

We’ll also provide guidance and updates to help support the new changes in Russia run as smoothly as possible on our corporate site on DST at http://www.microsoft.com/time, with worldwide guidance and details on this important change. This site will provide the information needed by our customers and partners to react and issue updates to their products and services to accommodate this change. Our groups around the world will promote these changes locally, similar to the work that Microsoft New Zealand provided on http://www.microsoft.co.nz/timezone, supported and promoted by the efforts of the government here. For the change in Russia, we provide specific details and guidance in country at http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cp_dst/ru.

Which reminds me: we are also communicating our recommendations to help achieve more seamless transitions to new DST and time zone policies. (More information is also available at http://support.microsoft.com/gp/dst_ms_response.)

That’s a lot of work. Так давайте работать! 😉

Tags: Microsoft, Daylight Saving Time, Daylight Savings Time, RSS, DST, Russia

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