TLA, FLA: it’s all alphabet soup
1 min read
Semiconductor repping organisation Spectrum Electronics has renamed itself Ismosys. Fair enough; nothing wrong with that. But it has also invented a new FLA.
The FLA – four letter acronym – is ISMO, or international sales and marketing operation. In an industry wallowing in jargon and acronyms of all description, is this a good move? Once, you had a good idea of what a company did when it said 'we're a manufacturer', 'we're a distributor', 'we're a rep' and so on. Ismosys will say it's an ISMO.
Acronyms work only when people understand what they mean. So, after years of exposure to technology, you remember what CPU or RAM or FPGA mean. New Electronics uses acronyms – we assume there is general understanding of a particular terminology but we are often taken to task for lapsing into what is essentially jargon.
Until – if, maybe – ISMO gains currency as an acronym, Ismosys is likely to get two possible responses to the statement that it's an ISMO: "What's that?" or, more likely, "Are you?"
