System iNetwork

March 2006

March 30, 2006 9:36 PM

I Like System i Like Crazy

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet." -- Shakespeare, from Romeo and Juliet.

Yes, a few weeks ago, IBM announced that they were changing the name of our beloved system from iSeries to System i. Actually, if you want to be technical about it, the previous name was IBM eServer iSeries, and the current generation was called IBM eServer iSeries i5. Now, the current generation is IBM System i5, and the server line is called IBM System i.

Our system is a great system, no matter what the name. That's why I put the Shakespeare quote at the beginning of this article. However, System i is a particularly bad choice.

No, it's not just because I've finally become used to iSeries instead of AS/400.

To someone who writes about this system as much as I do, the name is difficult to work with. Why? Because "system" is a word. And "i" is a word. Look at the title of this blog entry, and think about it.

It's hard to write sentences and have them be clear, because someone can easily misinterpret the "i" as the word "I". Or the roman numeral. I may not be a perfect wordsmith, but I do strive to make my sentences easily understood. Sentences like "System i is the best" are just difficult to read, and until you've taken the time to think them through, it sounds like incorrect grammar!

But that's not all. Try surfing over to Google and searching for "System i". It's just about impossible to get meaningful results. Anywhere that the word "system" happens to be followed by the word "I", you get a hit. Isn't the Internet supposed to be an important tool for marketing your product?

Then there's the inconsistency of the whole thing. Although IBM rebranded the whole family of servers as System i, and only the current generation is System i5, they call the operating system i5/OS! It runs on the whole family, doesn't it?

Right about the time that V5R4 was announced, and the new name was announced, IBM also moved the Information Center. The link I liked to start at used to be http://www.iseries.ibm.com/infocenter. It was easy to remember, so no matter where I happened to be, I could type that link. It was great. When they changed it, I thought to myself "they must want to remove the iSeries from the name, and make it System i or System i5. Right?"

Wrong. The new link is http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/iseries/. Indeed, about the only part of the URL they kept was the word iSeries.

When you go to that link, the title says "IBM eServer iSeries Information Center". It tells you that it's for the i5/OS and iSeries platform. Okay, maybe they didn't update that part of the page. The V5R4 Information Center is new, so it'll say System i, right? Nope.

The V5R4 Information Center, IBM's primary source of information for our platform refers to itself as the iSeries Information Center. It further clarifies the situation by stating the following:

Note: IBM(R) System i5(TM) is the latest member of the family of eServer iSeries(TM). The documentation in the iSeries Information Center might refer to System i5 as iSeries.

Wait a second... I was just at COMMON and saw several senior IBM senior officials just told everyone that the new family name is System i, and not eServer iSeries. How can IBM System i5 be "part of the eServer iSeries family"?

Indeed, those same officials claimed that the name change was absolutely necessary so that the name would be consistent within IBM. Yes, that's right, consistent within IBM.

Yes, we have a great system no matter what it's called. It's true. But when you're trying to market something, you need to consider how people will react to it. That's really what marketing is all about, isn't it? How will people react to your product. What sort of feeling will it evoke in them? How will they perceive your product?

IBM's message in calling it "System i" is far from clear. They don't even seem to know what their goal is. Unless, of course, the goal was confusion?

IBM has really outdone itself this time.

Posted by on March 30, 2006 at 9:36 PM | Comments (98)