Last month InformationWeek’s Bob Evans started a contest asking their readership to come up with a better name for “Cloud Computing”. Reason was that the CEO’s of both HP and IBM recently expressed some discontent with the current name. Something about “Cloudy not being clear enough”. Not clear enough for what, for justifying really large invoices? And then we are not even mentioning Oracle’s CEO, who has been on a contra-Cloud quest for ages.
The overwhelming majority of the 500 names the contestants submitted were acronyms, which make you wonder whether IT is truly beyond salvation. No amount of Cloud can save people that speak mnemonics, especially now IT’s role is changing so significantly. Bob’s personal favorites for a new name were Cloud 9, Univac, the Matrix, and Rain. I secretly suspect some of these are acronyms in disguise. Personally I was very surprised that nobody took the opportunity to
repeat the IT scam of the century. About twenty years ago someone called one type of computing OPEN, thus instantly making all other types of computing “closed” and therefore bad.
So what would the equivalent of OPEN be for Cloud?
Cloud Computing becomes Easy Computing – not believable enough?
Cloud Computing becomes Clear Computing – not compelling enough?
Cloud Computing becomes Open Computing – too early?
(some of the original open folks are still alive)
Cloud Computing becomes Cool Computing – Yes, even sounds familiar!
So we have a winner! Cool Computing
Now we just need to change the name of this blog.
Good thing that name changes are truly a core competency around here.
Tune Into The Cloud 