You may have seen my tweet from yesterday:
Honestly, if it hadn’t been such a public forum I’d have hit my head on the desk several times… I can’t say what the product name was as the discussion was under NDA and I don’t break those.
However, it made me think about what makes a good product name – you know, one that means something to users and customers (examples: Notes, Domino, DB2, Quickr, Facebook, Twitter, Cortina, Corvette, etc. etc.).
Here’s my manifesto for future IBM product naming:
1. Â Â Â Â Must be less than two words, excluding IBM.
2. Â Â Â Â Must not include a description of what the product does in plain language (examples: Lotus Instant Messaging, Tivoli Intelligent Metering Network Management)
3.     Must not contain current industry buzz words that will be out of fashion in less than 18 months (example: IBM Service Manager for Smart Business, anything containing ‘Cloud’, ‘Social Business’)
4.     Must be 95% likely to return the first result when googled (examples of failures in this area: i – the latest name for AS400, access manager, application server)
5. Â Â Â Â Must engender some form of bonding from those it is aimed at (or at least not complete antipathy!)
Any more requirements that you would add?
