Domino Diva

This is one name change that went over extremely smoothly, in fact, I think it is the only name change for the operating system that has gone over so smoothly.  For a little background, the System i (AS/400, iSeries) has always had a different name for the operating system associated with the hardware platform.  When the System was known as the AS/400, the operating system was called OS/400.  The OS/400 name was kept when the system was renamed to iSeries.  Then along came the name change to System i.  At that time, the new hardware was Power 5, so the operating system was renamed to i5/OS.  We have had that name for the past few years, now along comes the new Power 6 hardware, uh, wait, guess we have to rename the operating system again.

Luckily they didn't decide to rename the OS to i6/OS, as you can guess what would happen when Power 7, 8, ... would come along.  Instead, the name has been shortened to simply 'i'.  Mark Shearer, VP of Marketing and Offerings for Business Systems, made this announcement last Wednesday morning at the IBM Town Hall session at the COMMON conference.  This is the first time I have seen an IBM executive get up in front of the COMMON crowd and announce a name change and actually get applause.  I think it helped that everyone knew it would be an endless cycle of renamings if the operating system name continued to follow the hardware version.  So now we have 'i' running on IBM Power Systems. 

The new name 'i', will also be known as 'i for Business', since this operating system is known for running business applications.  A positive that will come out of this announcement is that we will actually be seeing 'i for Business' in IBM advertistments, and no, it won't be hidden on some corner of the advertistment so tiny you can't read it!  Anytime the new Power Systems hardware is mentioned, all 3 operating systems that run on the hardware will also be advertised: i for Business, AIX, and Linux.