Tuesday, August 3, 2010

What does ESX stand for?

Not too long ago I was doing some general VMware introduction to a number of colleauges from our Chinese branch. One of the guys asked what ESX was short for. And I had actually no idea. It's a product I've been working with for several years and yet it hadn't ocurred to that ESX was probably more than just a three letter name.

Today, I saw an article on acronyms on Yellow-Bricks which reveals the secret. Furthermore, there's a link to a video interview with Mike DiPetrillo which elaborates on the matter (about 20 minutes in...)

So:

ESX: Elastic Sky X
GSX: Ground Storm X

The two names was invented by some marketing people hired by VMware. VMware didn't like it too much so they shortened it to ES and GS and the X was added just to make it sound more technical!