Great post, Timothy. Now if only they'd talked to you before renaming System i to "IBM i" -- perhaps the worst name ever for a product in this Google age!
On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 3:18 AM, Timothy Sipples <[email protected]>wrote: > 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 > -- zMan -- "I've got a mainframe and I'm not afraid to use it" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
