The Options Symbology Initiative and buy side (fund managers) - pay attention

Security Industry News interviewed me in my role as America's Regional Co-chair of FIX Protocol Ltd. on the upcoming Options Symbology Initiative (OSI), the long overdue upgrade to options symbology within US markets. My compliments to my former employer, The Options Clearing Corporation for taking on the role of the bad guy to force the industry to do something that should have been done many years ago. If we are not going to take this hopefully once in a century financial crisis to put our houses in order, when are we going to do so?
So not unsurprisingly, Security Industry News dropped my most important statement, you know the type of quote where you say, no matter what you print make sure you tell the buy-side executives and decision makers not to make any assumptions. Do not assume all of your systems will automatically handle the conversion. You need to explicitly go through and check every internally developed application, you need to contact your software and services providers and have them explain to you how they tested and how they know they are ready for OSI.
Alas, much of the stated progress on straight through processing is still unrealized. You need to make sure there are not internally developed desktop applications, data files, spreadsheets, and processing steps that have escaped the scrutiny that could have an adverse effect on your business. What do your traders use possibly for pricing that may not be part of your IT inventory?
The bottom line and the purpose of this post is to say, what I wanted to say in the Security Industry News article.
Don't assume everything is going to work - verify and don't take the initial answer that everything is fine and ready to go and wherever possible test your systems. Remember the Russian saying Ronald Reagan used, "doveryai, no proveryai". Trust but Verify.