In-Depth
10 Unnecessary Microsoft Product Name Changes
Why, oh why?
If there's one thing Microsoft loves to do, it's come up with new names. Even "Microsoft" was originally called "Micro-soft." Here we present 10 products whose names really didn't need to be changed.
- The Windows client went through Windows 1, 2, 3; then years, with Windows 95 and 98 (with a brief experiment with Windows ME); then Microsoft added words or letters after Windows (like XP and Vista); finally, the company has gone back to using numbers with Windows 7
- Windows Mobile 6 is now Windows Phone 7
- Windows NT is now Windows Server
- Office Communications Server is now Lync Server 2010
- Hotmail is now Windows Live Hotmail
- Search went from MSN Search to Windows Live Search to Bing
- Business Productivity Online Suite is now Office 365
- Microsoft Office Groove is now SharePoint Workspace
- On the Enterprise Resource Planning front, Solomon, Axapta, Great Plains and Navision were all changed to include "Dynamics," becoming Dynamics SL, Dynamics AX, Dynamics GP and Dynamics NV, respectively
- SoftGrid became App-V
About the Author
Doug Barney is editor in chief of Redmond magazine and the VP, editorial director of Redmond Media Group.