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Is 'MetaPod': a) a Pokemon; b) servers running OpenStack?

Wheezy Cisco replaces 'respiratory disease' with 'a useless person'

Logowatch We only break out Logowatch for special occasions, and this one surely counts: Cisco has decided that its OpenStack Private Cloud is a tad dull, uses too many words and, worst of all, gave rise to jokes.

As of now, The Borg wants users to kindly remember that the correct name for Cisco OpenStack Private Cloud is "Cisco MetaPod".

Ciscan Niki Acosta (an OpenStack evangelist) got the joyful job of blogging about the name change here.

The product moniker apparently bumped against The Borg's branding guidelines (which, El Reg notes, long ago used to include trying to convince editors that the correct company name was cisco rather than Cisco).

“When naming a product or service, the expectation is that the chosen name is descriptive,” she wrote. “Metacloud OpenStack was a recognised distribution of OpenStack, but when we were acquired, we were able to transfer the distribution rights to Cisco.”

Alas, the resulting Cisco OpenStack Private Cloud was too long, people abbreviated it to COPC, and that “sounds like a respiratory disease”.

Hence the new name. Cisco Metapod meets the branding guidelines, chimes nicely with the Borg and NetApp's "FlexPods" (but not the Cisco/IBM VersaStack),is short enough for those of short attention spans, and is otherwise unchanged.

It's also the name of what resident Reg shinnichi* Andy said was the worst Pokemon ever. "It had no attack. It just hardened to defend itself. Which is a bit inappropriate for kids," Andy recalled.

So rubbish was the MetaPod that Urban Dictionary defined it as "A useless person who rarely moves outside his house, likes to stay in and his head is impenetrable to matters outside his computer."

Sure that respiratory disease was the worst choice, Cisco? ®

*Shinnichi is a Japanophile.

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