In many ways, it's the age-old story of product and technology manufacturers selling themselves rather than what they make, all in the hopes of selling, er, what they make. It's about selling an image, product be damned; they'll let us sort out the details later.
And so IBM is striving to help you build an "on-demand" business. HP has mastered the "adaptive infrastructure." Cisco is the purveyor of the "intelligent infrastructure." Microsoft's software is all about the "agile business." Novell "speaks your language."
Have you heard of Vieo? It makes an appliance of some sort, but calls itself a leader in "Adaptive Application Infrastructure Management." Sybase is introducing tools that help folks "measure and improve their Information Liquidity." And Citadel Security Software is making something it's calling "automated vulnerability remediation."
This isn't a column, by the way. It's a dynamic message transfer agent.
I truly understand the need to sex things up, but if vendors really wanted to speak your language, they'd at least tell you what they're selling. Maybe it's just not exciting to hawk installation software, servers, switches, authentication technology, databases and the other straightforward items we're used to. Maybe it's more fun to dress them up in marketing lingerie.
Discover the benefits of scalable backbone and network services for application and cloud providers.
Network automation is gaining momentum. Here's how you can drive this powerful technology to its full potential.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
