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| revisiting animal brands in
storage |
Editor:- July 19, 2016 - a
press
release today from Seagate
about new hard drives
isn't something I would have mentioned here were it not for its abundance of
animal brands which include:-BarraCuda, IronWolf and SkyHawk.
Which got
me looking at 2 lists which I compiled a long time ago on this theme,
namely:-
As I've often said
before - all the best animals have been taken. But it's interesting to look at
the 3 in today's news story.
BarraCuda?
Seagate's
press release today acknowledges that the BarraCuda was a well known brand
which it had used before. But what about the others?
IronWolf?
We've
had a wolf before - as a tape
library from StorageTek.
But the new IronWolf brand - as a
marketing construct - cleverly combines several different metaphors
simulataneously.
- wolf - as in the animal metaphor
SkyHawk?
I haven't seen SkyHawk used
for an HDD before - but it was used as the brand for a
rackmount SSD
launched by Skyera in August 2012. Skyera was later acquired by
Western Digital which
could have made it a problematic choice for a storage related product. Except
that differences between HDDs and SSDs are now well understood and WDC EOLed
that product line so Seagate's SkyHawk and WDC's SkyHawk aren't circling in the
same marketing skies at the same time.
But even if they were - the
general principle is you can't exclusively trademark such common words.
The main exception to this being a well known fruit which appears in the same
scene as a serpent in the Book of Genesis. | | |
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| SSD Guru , Vector 180 and
some random thoughts about product naming conventions |
Editor:- March 25, 2015 - We live in a world
where it's pointless buying a phone unless you are prepared to develop and hone
your SysAdmin skills - so I shouldn't be surprised by the growing number of
software utilities aimed at the consumer SSD market.
An aptly named
such product -
SSD Guru (not be confused with
SSD market gurus)
- appeared in an email today from OCZ - which plays a
supporting
role for the company's "next generation"
Vector 180 SSD (a
performance optimized SATA
SSD) aimed at "gamers, enthusiasts and workstation users."
Editor's
comments:- re that "next generation" tag line - as I'm not
familiar with the numbering system OCZ uses for its SSDs - I'm not sure whether
this is OCZ's 180th consumer SSD (that seems a bit low by my count) or
whether this is OCZ's 18th consumer SSD generation (that seems too high).
If I get a helpful note of what the "180" means - I'll add
a note here later.
the problem with numbers
Because I
read about so many products and suppliers - I do sometimes miss obvious
clues.
For example - it took me about 11 years to recognize that the
numbers in TMS's
rackmount SSD systems (the
RamSan boxes)
had been incrementing by 100 every year or so - each time they included a
new generation of controllers or memory. Which did make sense when it was
explained to me.
And it looks like
IBM is
still
maintaining that tradition. What comes next? (after 900?) - numbers are the
easiest part of the SSD guessing game. It's
what could be
inside the next box we're
not so hot at
guessing.
Such
product naming
schemes do run into problems after enough time has elapsed as we've seen
many times in computer history.
CPUs give us some clues - as they
were the primary apps acceleration technology before SSDs.
(80)86,
went (with some detours) to 286, 386, and 486 and then morphed into
Pentium
- which (unlike numbers) could be a registered trademark.
SPARC
started with
numbers and then added words.
SSD product names have many
naming variations
too.
But - going back to numbers.
The problem with
numbers is when they get too long (due to the longevity of the product family)
you have to recycle them - which makes it confusing for old people who saw them
the first time around.
And (I know it may be unfair to say this about
product marketers) but sometimes you get the vague feeling - particularly in
more slowly evolving markets like autos - that the names and the numbers and
the colors have changed. But inside everything that matters still remains
exactly the same as it was before. | | | |
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How did mice
become the face of
StorageSearch.com? | |
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We haven't got the stage
where the color or the brand on the SSD box (are the main things which)
determine how many SSDs get sold.
SSD IP (Intellectual Property) is
still an important factor in establishing leadership in the minds of the market.
|
| ......Q4 2011 edition of
-
the Top 20 SSD Companies | | |
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| Sonnet Technologies has
been using the Fusion name for our storage product since before Fusion-io
existed as a company. | | |
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Kent Smith told me that
LSI used to call the SandForce products "SSD processors".
But
that didn't show up in Google.
Because designers were looking for "SSD
controllers".
So LSI changed its parlance.
It now
calles them "SSD controllers"
like everyone else does. |
LSI integrates "SSD
market on a chip"
November 18, 2013 | | |
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