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Advisory: Potential changes to Daylight Saving Time in Iraq

Microsoft has learned of a potential change to the observance of daylight saving time (DST) in Iraq. This change may affect customers who use the Baghdad time zone. An early, unsubstantiated report says that the Ministry of Iraq has decided that the country will no longer observe DST even though they have in prior years. The change is currently scheduled to take effect on April 1, 2008. To this point, Microsoft has not been able to officially verify this change. If the change to not observe DST in Iraq is made, this may affect customers and partners in the region who use the Baghdad time zone. This includes military facilities and other entities that engage in business in or with the region. Microsoft is working with government representatives and customers in the region to confirm the change in Iraq. Microsoft is also trying to understand and document the scenarios and the potential implications. Specific guidance is available at http://blogs.technet.com/dst2007/archive/2008/03/25/advisory-potential-dst-change-in-iraq-technical-guidance.aspx.

- The Exchange Team

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Published Wednesday, March 26, 2008 12:51 PM by Exchange
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Comments

 

Jack Tyler said:

This post is kind of amusing.  While it's good to see Microsoft paying attention to these things, they appear to have completely ignored changes to DST in the neighbouring nation of Iran.  The country stopped DST a couple of years ago, but started it up again just a week back, with plenty of official notice having been given last year.  And yet is there a patch?  No there isn't.  The last info MS have on the Iran timezone is that a patch to REMOVE DST (when they stopped two years ago) was NOT included in a rollup LAST YEAR because official word hadn't been received in time.  How many years will it be before MS catch up?  I hate to say it, but maybe MS would pay more attention if there were US forces in Iran too - till then the needs of the Iranians can presumably be ignored.
March 28, 2008 12:36 AM
 

Valkyrie said:

Jack I think you could be right... I dare say that this sentence sums it up: "This includes military facilities and other entities that engage in business in or with the region."

Sadly that would probably be their only motivating factor.
March 31, 2008 1:17 AM
 

M3 Sweatt (Microsoft) said:

Microsoft tracks DST, Summer Time and time zone changes around the world.  As we learn of possible changes, we validate these with te local government to confirm the change.  (I've seen some reports that were incorrectly reported by third parties.)  In the case of Iraq, we had reports from customers and staff in the region, so we have followed the change closely and call them out to major, multinational customers impacted by the change.  

At Microsoft (as noted at http://blogs.msdn.com/mthree/archive/2008/03/27/iraq-dst-not-032708.aspx) product teams are moving to a semi-annual update cadence, following the Windows regular cadence for publishing newly legislated DST rules and time zone updates.  The annual "Cumulative DST and Time Zone Updates" will be released in November/ December for the coming calendar year, and we'll also provide for a semi-annual update in the July/August timeframe when needed.  In some cases we may not be able to accomodate a late-breaking change (as was teh case in Argentina over New Years.
March 31, 2008 10:59 PM
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