Bless you: Yep, it's IBM's new name for tech services spinoff and totally not a hayfever medicine It has been a busy couple of months for creatives toiling away in IBM's strategy boutique but the team has conjured marketing magic with a scintillating new brand name that will head up the breakaway Global Technology Services unit. Kyndryl. Whisper it again. Kyndryl. It will be synonymous with quality tech infrastructure …
It marks a point in any organisation's death spiral when it comes up with a wanky rebranding and spouts bollocks about how it embodies some sort of psycho-babble. Sometime the organisation survives - anyone remember when PWC renamed their consulting division "Monday" - but often the PR puff is actually just death rattles.
And why-oh-why-oh-why would any branding professional conceive a name that starts with 'kin ? That's just Kynaskingfortrouble™.
Uhhh...I'm told they're now to be referred to as "People Partners" (at least, at my company).
Along with all the other stuff they spout, I'm now supposed to do a "self evaluation" every 6 months, and come up with "goals".
How about, I just do my job to the best of my ability and try to keep the clients happy? Would that work for you? Good, me too. See how easy that was?
The only time I did a 'self evaluation' was when it was launched (10+ years ago?). I'm not good with 'what I did on my holidays'-type waffle and just filled in one of the boxes. I was told I was supposed to use all 3 boxes (achievements, goals and something else) and I never bothered. I was on max payscale then with no bonuses, so no incentive to play their game
'"Kyn" was derived from kinship [...] "Dryl", was drawn from tendril.'
They'd maybe get away with "Kyn" at a pinch, but "dryl" makes no sense at all. The components of "tendril" are "tend" (to wander) and "ril" ( a suffix indicating the thing that does it). This problem is far from new, and typified by 'copter for helicopter. That breaks down etymologically into "helico" (rotating) and "pter" (a wing), so the particle "co" is actually meaningless.
This is not pedantry. Evolved words really do have intrinsic meanings based on their origins (albeit often pretty distantly). Just making up new noises is not how language genuinely evolves. Unfortunately the advent of mass communications has allowed what once would have been ephemeral arbitrary coinings to spread fast and widely so they enter the canon before they have been properly tested for their capacity to impart ideas.
The advantage of language evolving from its etymolgical roots is that it often allows an informed hearer or reader to be able to work out what an unfamiliar word may mean without recourse to a dictionary. Arbitrary coinings don't allow that - they have to be explained, which defeats the fundamental purpose of language.
Interesting post, thank you. Especially the example of 'copter.
However surely it's kind of irrelevant in terms of the example of Kyndryl (whatever the hell they think it means), as surely that's been created not for the English language but as a trademarkable name for a new business entity.
As I say, not to detract from your post though as I found that interesting.
I'd expect they've pushed it through a search of various languages to make sure it doesn't mean something like bend over or lick my dick or some such in some less familiar language where they could be laughed at: I've Been Mortified is not a nickname to get.
A pretty anodyne name that sounds a little funky is probably high up the terms of reference they set when looking. Isn't NewCorp 75% of the old IBM, focussing on the less sexy side of IT? If it is getting all the mainframe business then it's going to be around for a long time yet, so best get used to the catchy name.
What was it again?
The Kyndryl are small, shy creatures with no natural magic of their own. They spend their time searching the woodlands of Ecosia for traces of stray pixie dust in the hope that it might be used to sprinkle a little magic onto their own systems. Alas they never realise that pixie dust is Impish and affects only their own senses, thus their systems are always destined to remain ordinary in the eyes of their beholders.
Can we all just calm down please? I make a fortune from designing artwork and logo marks for rebranding etc. We were there when the Thomson Reuters F&R business rebranded as "Refinitiv". How we laughed. Just before the press release the rebrand manager asked us what we thought of the name....not a single one of the meeting replied. Not a whisper. He looked suicidal so someone at the back said "well it's different..."
Anyway - Please don't fuck things up for me and my mates, we know it's bollocks. And we agree.
I wonder, was diphenhydramine already taken as a name?
Seriously, makes me think of Benadryl, down to the causing drowsiness thing, and it opening the nose, in this case to get the money to flow out of it easier.
Icon, because unlike diphenhydramine, you'll practically be required to drink when on Kyndryl ...
"They just don't make any sense anymore...."
And they no longer make Servers, or Workstations, or Laptops,.... now they've farmed off the outsourcing, leaving core IBM with,.... Cloud and Z-Series?
I did a contract at a Bank, and they had a couple of Z-Series,.. only time I've seen one in the wild. I don't know anyone who uses IBM cloud.
They cut Notes / Symphony loose some time ago. As someone forced to use 'Symphony' it was more of a cacophony.
Just how do they make revenue?
Kyndryl? I'd run the other way. Why pay top-dollar prices for overworked, entry-level Indian techs? The seemingly proficient pre-sales technicians disappear. Then... prepare to be ignored.
I can't tell you how many times our sites were down ALL DAY, over and over again, until we informed them their systems had a problem. Each time we were assured they've got all the monitoring in-place properly THIS TIME. And then it happens again... and again... and again. Most recently, they suddenly switched to using an old, expired SSL certificate for our site... until one of our processes errored and once again we were notifying them our site is down.
And that's all AFTER we worked through and sorted out all the ways they misconfigured our site and could not figure out the problems (they caused) on their own. The lack of knowledge of, or interest in, our systems was astounding. It seems you get the exact OPPOSITE of what you pay for; as small, cheap shops show a bit of motivation and initiative. All we got was a lot of long conference calls where they ask us basic technical questions, and then forget all the work they were going to do until moments before the next call.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
