Getting Acronym'd To Death
Then why is it so hard to be consistent?
Just this week alone we got heavily blitzed by two relatively new acronyms: FCoE, or Fibre Channel over Ethernet, and CNA, or converged network adapters.
FCoE is the new way to connect Fibre Channel (FC) storage area networks (SANs) over Internet Protocol (IP) networks without changing the FC infrastructure. It relies on CNAs to connect servers to the network.
FCoE is probably destined to be the main way to connect FC SANs over IP using CNAs. But to make up for two new acronyms, it will eliminate at least one other: FCIP, or Fibre Channel over IP, which required changing the FC infrastructure to connect SANs across IP.
And remember, SAN spelled backward is NAS.
Thank Heavens for Steve Sicola, CTO of Xiotech, Eden Prairie, Minn. and coiner of the best acronyms in the industry. He's the guy who gives us such gems as DUDE, or Damned Undetected Data Errors, and NUDE, or No Undetected Data Errors, in reference to SCSI-based storage.
Sicola also put the CRAP in storage. CRAP, as in cost, reliability, availability and performance. "CRAP is good," he often says.
Yet for all the love of our acronyms, there's one we just can't seem to get right: 10-gigabit-per-second Ethernet.
How to write it? Do we do like QLogic, Aliso Viejo, Calif., and write it as 10GbE? Or like Emulex, Costa Mesa, Calif., and write it as 10Gb/s Ethernet? I've also seen it written as 10 GigE, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Maybe we should just cop out and do like Cisco Systems, San Jose, Calif., which writes it as 10 Gigabit Ethernet?
If you are not laughing, then you know how serious an issue this is. By not standardizing on an acronym, how can we know which term to search for in Google?
For instance, a search for "10 gbit" returns only about 21,800 references, while a search for "10 gigabit ethernet" returns 664,000 references. "10gbe" returns 527,000 references, but if you add a space and search for "10 gbe" you get only 210,000 references. Fortunately, Google gets rid of dashes, so "10-gbe" also gets 210,000.
That's little solace to someone who needs that 210,001st reference.
Some of the worst offenders, however, are the vendors. EMC, of Hopkinton, Mass., for instance, constantly throws out the term BURA at me. And the sad part is, I'm already at the point where I know it's short for "backup, recovery, and archiving."
Then there are the vendors who can't even remember what their own acronyms mean. Just today, I was talking to an exec from Hewlett-Packard, Palo Alto, Calif., who told me about the ABSP program, and danged if he didn't know what it meant.
The conversation went something like this:
HP person: This past year, we rolled out the ABSP program. . . .
Me: ABSP? What does that mean?
HP person: (laughs) I can't remember. (turns to a PR person) Do you know what it stands for?
PR person: No. I'll circle around and get back to you on that. (It turns out that it stands for Authorized Business Solution Partner).
It's not just HP. It happens all the time.