Me, IBM, and i
Posted: April 19, 2008 Filed under: Abe Batthish, IBM i, IBM Power Systems, iSeries, System i | Tags: Abe Batthish, Apple, AS/400, Google, i5/OS, IBM i, IBM Power Systems, iSeries, naming, OS/500, System i 6 CommentsI’ve always wanted IBM to take advantage of the “i” in iSeries. Apple had the right idea with iPod, iTunes, iMac, even though I do believe iSeries was there before the iPod came around. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Well IBM, after deliberating with the user community, has taken it to a new level… introducing IBM i. Simple enough?
BTW.. Love the new logo. Not only are we saying goodbye to the OS name i5/OS, once OS/400… now just IBM i.
And for hardware: System i, once iSeries, AS/400, and others before my time… now merged with System p to form IBM Power Systems.
But we’re also saying goodbye to the VRM version naming: so i5/OS V6R1 now simply IBM i 6.1. Believe it or not, I think this will be the toughest one for me to get over since its been around the longest.
Though I think “i” will be tough to Google. Simple is good. “IBM i” seems to Google well.
Lots of changes. I just hope these names will finally stick around. To me its always been the “i” in IBM.
PS: Blog name changes once again :)
IBM i Rational Team Blog 
I agree that emphasizing the ‘i’ for integration is great, but I think a single lower-case letter for the name of anything is a bad idea. The reason you name a product (in my mind) is so you can talk about it using it’s name, and easily find information about it – IBM has allowed both of these to take a back seat.
This is just another case of IBM marketing royally screwing it up if you ask me. If the official name was “IBM i” that would have been better, but as I understand it, that is simply the version to make it easily searchable. Almost feels like somebody was admiring the-artist-formerly-known-as-prince when they christened the new name.
On the flip side I certainly DO like RDi over WDSC :-)
I’m personally not too crazy about the name change either. I like simple, but I agree with Aaron its going to be hard for search engines to understand that. Wikipedia has been updated (though not the URL):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I5/OS
I’m just glad we don’t need to change the product’s short name from “RDi” after this round.
I really like the new Power logo!
IBM just won’t quit obfuscating the brand recognition of this machine, will they? If you want to bury your product, you rename it. Just when they realize it’s the same thing, they rename it again. I truly believe IBM could care less about their hardware anymore and wouldn’t care if the already waning support for the machine were to be lost forever.
The OS and its reliable database are the best kept secrets on the planet.
love the new logo
Jane M
http://www.alphabettermedshop.com