InternetThe Great Industry Standard Conspiracy

As x86 becomes the ever-pervasive server "standard," RISC and other long-standing and capable architectures are being pushed further into the cold. Natural market forces or deliberate positioning on the part of the OEMs?

A couple of innocuous words that have insidious consequences. A simple marketing tagline, yet it appears to be seriously undermining a vast segment of the computer sector. What is it? The phrase, "industry standard." It comes from the same warped (but ingenious) minds that coined the term "legacy" back in the 1990s. That harmless word served to forward the Windows NT - Intel processor gravy train at the expense of so-called inferior technologies like mainframe, OpenVMS and even Unix. Yet many would argue that despite all the genuine improvement to Windows in recent years to make it much more enterprise friendly, it still can't hold a candle to many of these legacy systems. The rumor goes that the legacy propaganda was originated between a Gartner analyst and someone in the Windows NT development/marketing camp. Whether true or not, it certainly helped sell an awful lot of Wintel gear. Now we have "industry-standard" weaving its way into the computer lexicon. The hidden intention appears to be to outlaw RISC and everything else except x86-Intel fare. Go to Sun's Web site and you will find numerous legacy references. In fact, Sun has an "industry-standard server" line. Even IBM's site is full of it. And of course, HP bought into it chip, line and sinker. The reason I mentioned those vendors specifically is that they were or are the ones with the most to lose. RELATED ARTICLES Oracle Server Rollout Builds on BEA Buy Intel 'Comfortable' Despite Economic Uncertainty Intel's... [ Read more on www.internetnews.com ]

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