IBM's AS/400 is the only survivor of the era of the midrange computing. Unfortunately IBM has always been struggling with its image in the market place: rock-solid but incredibly dull. Somehow they seem to think that changing the name of the machine every couple of years is the best way to make the platform look sexy.

When I started working for IBM in 1994 the hardware was called "AS/400" (an acronym for Application System) and the operating system was called "OS/400". Life was simple back then.

Over the years the name of the hardware has been changed to:

AS/400e

The term ebusiness was really hot.

iSeries

We're now a member of the larger IBM eServer family which also included the xSeries, pSeries and zSeries.

i5

The Power5 chip was introduced. Oh... and numbers are cool.

System i

We've moved to Power 6 chips now. Numbers are no longer cool.

The name of the operating system changed only once. It went from "OS/400" to "i5/OS".

Earlier this week IBM did it again: another name change. The name of the operating system becomes i. At the same time they try to get rid of the VxRx version numbers and move to the much cooler x.x numbering.

Confuse the marketplace, annoy existing customers and make sure you won't be able to google for anything about the platform. Nice job.