Recently,
IBM decided to consolidate all of their server products into one product line, e-server. The
logo for the e-server is an
@ symbol but with an
e instead of an
a. I'm not sure what the
e stands for, but I'm pretty sure it is enterprise, because it would be somewhat redundant (and stupid) to call them electronic-servers. There are currently four e-server series available, each designated by an arbitrary letter:
- e-server xSeries: Formerly Netfinity, these are IBM's plain ol' Intel based servers. Nothing too fancy or innovative here, just a spiffy new name. Netfinity are in my opinion some of the best Intel based servers around.
- e-server iSeries: Formerly AS/400, these are generally used for running business applications like accounting. Green and black terminals and RPG and COBOL a-plenty. I'm not fond of the new name they gave to AS/400. It makes me think of their crappy Thinkpad iSeries line.
- e-server pSeries: Formerly RS/6000, these are IBM's AIX Unix based machines. They are PowerPC based. I've never worked with them, so I don't know much about them.
- e-server zSeries: Formerly System 390: these are IBM's big mamma Mainframe servers. These have been around forever, and with their fancy new name I'm sure they will be around for a while longer.
I don't like the new name for IBM's server lines. They take away the names that we have known and loved, and are jumping on the eName
bandwagon. I guess it's better than calling them iServers though.