What's in a name?
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This week Microsoft renamed their Real-Time Collaboration server (formerly Greenwich) server and their Placeware offering to "Microsoft Office Live Communications Server" and "Microsoft Office Live Meeting". A few people made some comments on this, such as the expected "the product hasn't even shipped yet and they're changing it's name" etc.
Now I've never been one to not have an opinion on something, but boy these names are so much smarter than the new ones that IBM spent thousands of dollars coming up with. "IBM Lotus Instant Messaging" and "IBM Lotus Web Conferencing" replace IBM Lotus Sametime. Now this was discussed in the Business Partner forum, but we were pretty much told that this has been discussed, and they don't want to go into it again, so here it is a benefit of a blog, I can get on my soapbox here and not have to worry about being told to shut up.
So why do I think the Microsoft names are better than the IBM ones? Well to be honest, the reason I like the Microsoft ones is that they are vague, they don't tie the product purely to Instant Messaging, IBMs naming may make it immediately obvious to potential new customers what the products do, but they also limit to the products consideration to those needs. I can tell you, Microsoft see RTC sorry "Live" as going to provide much more than just Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing, within the year you can expect to hear Microsoft making a lot of noise about Telephony integration, it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't have some telephony companies as announcement partners at their launch.
For a long time Sametime's benefits over the competition has been that it offered more than just Instant Messaging with Instant Meetings and powerful toolkits etc. So what does IBM do, it takes that competitive strength and weakens it by presenting them as two offerings. Sure it's the same license, but existing customers I chat to are already starting to get confused over which product they need to buy when in fact it's the same product.
It took me a long time to get used to calling Ami Pro, Word Pro, and a long time to call the Notes Server the Domino Server, and the NAB the Domino Directory and Kona, eSuite etc. So I hope it wont take me too long to get used to calling Sametime, Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing.
This week Microsoft renamed their Real-Time Collaboration server (formerly Greenwich) server and their Placeware offering to "Microsoft Office Live Communications Server" and "Microsoft Office Live Meeting". A few people made some comments on this, such as the expected "the product hasn't even shipped yet and they're changing it's name" etc.
Now I've never been one to not have an opinion on something, but boy these names are so much smarter than the new ones that IBM spent thousands of dollars coming up with. "IBM Lotus Instant Messaging" and "IBM Lotus Web Conferencing" replace IBM Lotus Sametime. Now this was discussed in the Business Partner forum, but we were pretty much told that this has been discussed, and they don't want to go into it again, so here it is a benefit of a blog, I can get on my soapbox here and not have to worry about being told to shut up.
So why do I think the Microsoft names are better than the IBM ones? Well to be honest, the reason I like the Microsoft ones is that they are vague, they don't tie the product purely to Instant Messaging, IBMs naming may make it immediately obvious to potential new customers what the products do, but they also limit to the products consideration to those needs. I can tell you, Microsoft see RTC sorry "Live" as going to provide much more than just Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing, within the year you can expect to hear Microsoft making a lot of noise about Telephony integration, it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't have some telephony companies as announcement partners at their launch.
For a long time Sametime's benefits over the competition has been that it offered more than just Instant Messaging with Instant Meetings and powerful toolkits etc. So what does IBM do, it takes that competitive strength and weakens it by presenting them as two offerings. Sure it's the same license, but existing customers I chat to are already starting to get confused over which product they need to buy when in fact it's the same product.
It took me a long time to get used to calling Ami Pro, Word Pro, and a long time to call the Notes Server the Domino Server, and the NAB the Domino Directory and Kona, eSuite etc. So I hope it wont take me too long to get used to calling Sametime, Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing.
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Posted by Tony C At 05:51:08 AM On 07/28/2003 | - Website - |