After my meeting with a big hardware vendor today, I just got an additional bunch of presentation slides and buzzwords. And yet another name for a remote management utility.

Although all of the tested remote management systems comply with IPMI 2.0, every vendor gives its baby a "shiny" new name:

  • Intel uses RMM2 (remote management 2),
  • Dell uses DRAC (Dell Remote Access Control),
  • Sun (now Oracle) uses ILOM (Integrated Lights Out Manager)
  • IBM uses IMM (Integrated Management Module)
  • and HP uses ILO (Integrated Lights-Out).

What's the reason for this? Why did the car industry manage to have the same name for the same feature (like ABS or ESP) and the IT industry not?