May 4th, 2007
Who can declare a "new standard?"
An press release came across my desk the other day from 3Leaf Systems. The company announced a I/O server and unilaterally declared that its new product sets a new standard. For some reason, this press release irritated me. Here are some of the reasons why I felt irritated.
- Silly me, I thought standards bodies, such as IEEE or ISO, declared international standards. Another way standards emerge is when very large and influential suppliers, who have successfully taken major shares of a given market, declare their products to be "industry standards" regardless of whether those products adhered to any internationally recognized standards.
- The concept of assigning I/O to a system handling only that task was pioneered in mainframes over 30 years ago and now is common place in midrange systems as well.
- Many cluster monitors or grid computing monitors routinely assign computing to some nodes and I/O processing to others. Once again the idea is common place.
Since I'm no expert on hardware, 3Leaf System's product might be breaking new ground somewhere. I just don't see where.
Do these sort of press releases impress you the same way?
Daniel Kusnetzky is a member of the senior management team of The 451 Group. He is responsible for research and publications on a broad array of technology topics. He examines emerging technology trends, vendor strategies, research and development issues, and end-user integration requirements. You can follow Dan on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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