Word has it that 'Es-oh-Ay' leads 'SO-Ah’ as the correct way to pronounce SOA in ebizQ's latest poll on the matter. However, SO-AH has been gaining as of late, up six percentage points over the past few days.
The latest tally is:
Es-oh-ay: 51.8%
SO-Ah: 31.6%
By election standards, that's a landslide. However, the votes are not all in, and not because of hanging chads, butterfly ballots, or Palm Beach County tying things up. We need YOUR input, readers! (Take the poll here.)
There's a nice reward for taking the time to enter your opinion on this important matter – the best comment will win its author an Apple iPhone.
Consider Dan D's comment: “SOA falls in as a single word acronym because it can be,” notes member Dan D who adds that, “we say I-B-M because “ib-em” is nonsensical...there is no rule but we are lazy speakers who love acronyms because they save us time (LOL). If we can save even more time by creating one utterance instead of three - we will."
There are other acronyms that really would have played well as words. For example, it would have been instructive to have called CRM "Cream," since the purpose of such systems is to help companies skim the "cream of the customer crop" off the top, leaving the rest for competitors to fight over.
And, as mentioned in my last post, it would have been interesting to call BPM "Beep-em," since its purpose to to nudge the traffic of workflow forward.
Then there's ASP. We can look upon application service providers as snaking their way into our infrastructures, or attempting to swallow something much bigger than themselves, or something like that...
If we sounded out BI as "Buy," there's plenty of loaded implications. Either a subliminal suggestion to lay out your money, or suggestion that such systems lead two lives.
Then there's good old J2EE. Wouldn't it sound funky if we called it "Jatooey" versus having to annunciate "Jay-too-double-ee"?
Leave a comment