I don't remember where I read or heard the story, but I think IBM preferred to use the term "storage" because "memory" implied that forgetting is possible. Therefore, to avoid conveying the impression that IBM computers could forget precious information -- or at least to suggest that forgetting was less likely -- "storage" it was.
Nowadays that worry seems rather quaint. But the story makes sense within the context of that time. There are still plenty of people who worry about naming and how to explain new technical concepts in clear, understandable language. Apple, for example, just introduced a "retina display" on their new iPhone 4. That's a good example of inventing a new term to describe and highlight a distinctive technical feature. To pick another example, the zEnterprise 196 is the first and only server to feature a Redundant Array of Independent Memory (RAIM) subsystem. All memory -- er, storage -- on the system is RAIM-protected. "RAIM" is close to "RAID," and that's intentional (I assume). A lot of people know what RAID is, and so they can quickly understand the basics of RAIM from that frame of reference. HiperDispatch is another example. The System z10's designers came up with some wonderful new technologies to steer work toward the processors that are most likely to have relevant data accessible in more proximate caches, but quite frankly the technical engineering names for those technologies weren't so wonderful. (I don't remember exactly, but it was yet another nondescript acronym with an embedded slash.) So after a bit of discussion the term HiperDispatch was born, and that's a lot easier for everyone to understand and appreciate. I think since more than 10 years have passed it's OK to relate another product naming story publicly. In the run-up to Y2K IBM was working on some patches and updates to PC-DOS. At the time PC-DOS Version 7 was the latest version available. My recollection is that the marketing team initially wanted to call the new product "PC-DOS Version 7.01 (Year 2000 Ready)" or something very, very close to that. I thought their proposed name was a bit -- how do I put it politely -- awful. I suggested "PC-DOS 2000." Not exactly breakthrough thinking, I admit, but sometimes only "outsiders" (outside the marketing team in this case) can see the obvious. Fortunately the marketing folks liked that name, and so it was that PC-DOS 2000 was born. It's hard to say exactly what that naming change meant, but it was worth at least several million dollars because people could actually find the darn product and understand what it meant in an instant. In a lot of sales catalogs and other listings the "(Year 2000 Ready)" parenthetical would have been chopped off. - - - - - Timothy Sipples Resident Enterprise Architect STG Value Creation & Complex Deals Team IBM Growth Markets (Based in Singapore) E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
