Microsoft is too hung up on names. Why do I say that? Because they like to change them and they like to push things simply on the name. Raise your hand if you got sick of hearing DOT NET all of the time? What about the word “Active”? Or COM or COM+? Microsoft picks words and then beats them to death picks them back up and beats them to death some more for the fun of it. You get to the point that you don’t ever want to hear that word again. The words “Dot NET” used together now to me are like a punchline. Go marketing!
Thankfully they backed down a little from Dot NET prior to releasing Windows Server 2003 because no one really wants to have to say “Yes my Windows .NET Server 2003” server is working well. I have some stuff (USB Memory stick and other swag) from the RDP (Rapid Deployment Program) time frame that says Windows .NET Server 2003, I was sick of looking at it even then.
Personally my opinion on OS naming should be…. version numbers including build thank you. Ok so maybe the consumer versions get “fancy” names, but I don’t buy server software because it has a cool name. To me, Microsoft Server 5.2.0.xxxx where xxxx is the current build is just as good as if not better than Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and hands down beats any server name with the words Dot and NET in it. Think about it, if they did stick to version numbers, people wouldn’t be all confused about Windows Server 2003 R2. Right now you got a bunch of folks, including I think some MCS folks who should know better, thinking R2 is another whole OS instead of Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 and some cool feature packs.
What really prompted me to write this blog entry is that we have gotten a recent announcement that several existing products are going to be renamed. These are products that really don’t need to be renamed and that aren’t changing to the extent that justifies a name change. What justifies a name change, when you change a product so much that it is really a whole new product, that means it is ok for you to change the name in my mind.
For instance, MMS – Microsoft Metadirectory Services was substantially rewritten and got a new name of MIIS – Microsoft Identity Integration Server (oh and IIFP which is Identity Integration Feature Pack for MIIS Lite). I hated the new name and thought it was stupid and simply an attempt to make people forget about how dorked up MMS was when they tried to use it but hey, MS did massive work on it, they can change it. But honestly, it is sort of like, wow that pile of stinky stuff is associated with that old name, let’s change it, no one will know…
But now they are changing names of products that are fine and dandy for no other reason than marketing. The products aren’t radically changing, they aren’t going through some massive rewrite. I mean come on really. How silly is that. For instance, if I followed this MS method, I would change the name of ADFIND to BobsDonuts or something like that just because at the moment I liked donuts and recently met someone named bob. What would that do for my customers? Nothing but confuse the shit out of them and have them think, “man that guy is whacked”.
So what new names you ask… They are here at the “AD Vision” page
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/news/bulletins/ADvision.mspx
Well Active Directory Domain Controller now becomes Active Directory Domain Services. Who is going to start calling their Domain Controllers Domain Services? The name domain controller has been in my dictionary now and the primary Microsoft thing I have worked on for 10 years. Some marketing guy telling me, yeah, that is now a domain service (domain servicer?) isn’t going to make me stop calling it a domain controller.
The ADAM product (Active Directory Application Mode) is now going to be called Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services. I admit, I liked the name ADAM, it is one of the few products that I thought, hey that is a decent name, it actually fits what it is and is nice and short and easy to use. You could have fun with the name too since it is the name of actual people. Honestly, I think a better rename would have been to Lightweight Services Directory which would have had the initials of what is driving whoever to do such dumb things over the years. Let me just say I much preferred MSADAM to MSADLDS and I certainly don’t exepect to walk around writing out the or saying the whole thing all of the time, easier to just start saying OpenLdap. More than likely, as with Domain Controllers, I will continue calling the product ADAM or AD Lite.
Microsoft Rights Management Services (RMS) gets renamed to Active Directory Rights Managament Services. Ironically the tech I couldn’t possibly care less about gets a slight mod to the name to include AD in it. Stupid, silly, yes – but at least they left the main part alone. I guess they didn’t much care about it either to spend the time to come up with something else.
Ditto for Windows Certificate Services getting renamed to Active Directory Certificate Services. I care a little more, but not much more than RMS. SSL/TLS is definitely more interesting to me than RMS.
And finally IIFP – Identity Integration Feature Pack gets renamed to, HAHAHA, get this, Active Directory Metadirectory Services. So when everyone just starts dropping the words Active Directory from things because it prefixes darn near everything, it will become MS or probably….. MMS (Microsoft Metadirectory Services). Wow, no confusion pending in that arena… Didn’t they drop that name once because of the associations with the original product they had that had large companies spitting mad when they got poorly or completely untrained MCS folks out trying to implement it?
The excuse for all of this is
“Microsoft is aligning all of the identity and access capabilities available in Windows Server around Active Directory to help customers simplify deployment and administration”
and
“The new server role names reflect Microsoft’s commitment to unify the architecture of these currently disparate technologies”.
But wait, just how disparate are these technologies? From my standpoint, you are often going to be using AD with all of them, heck ADAM ***IS*** AD, you can’t get more non-disparate than actually sharing the actual source code. The only key disparate thing seems to be the name… Does Marketing know this? Does Marketing know that we know this? Does Marketing know that bright people don’t buy things simply because they have a new name? What could they be saying about their customers?
Oh wait, what about MIIS? I don’t know, I guess it isn’t part of the Active Directory Identity Management push. I wonder if the MIIS folks know that. The last time I spoke with Andreas he thought MIIS had something to do with Identity Management, I expect he will be immensely surprised.
Note that when I say marketing, I don’t know for sure it was marketing. It could have been someone else who doesn’t have enough real work to do and thinks that renaming existing products is a good way to sell more or something. Personally I would like to see the time, money, energy, and other resources put into fixing the product and handling things so I don’t hear comments like, we don’t have the time or resources to put that into the next version, but we could possibly get it into Longhorn R2 or Blackcombe if it ever actually gets made.
joe
