Microsoft Product Names

Posted: July 5th, 2009
By:
Tommy Unger

I’ve come across the longest product name I’ve ever seen for a Microsoft Software Product. Ladies and gentlemen, I present:
Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Speech Server Developer Edition
or, as they say around Redmond: MOCS2SSDE

It’s always been a hobby of mine to keep track of what Microsoft is naming its products. It’s always in such sharp contrast with apple’s naming conventions, “iphone”, “imac”, etc. Microsoft seems to think the more it throws into the name, the more likely people will buy it. Well, I don’t buy it. If only MSFT would just come out with a spreadsheet that looks like this in their annual report:

Class Product Revenue Profit
OS Windows Vista Consumer 1,000 500
OS Windows Vista Business 2,500 1,200
OS Windows Server 2,500 1,500
Office Suite Consumer 2,500 1,500
Office Suite Business 12,500 6,500
Hardware xbox 11,500 -11,500
Games Halo, et. al. 5,500 -1,500
Who knows? Enterprise Business Server Small Business Professional Platinum Edition 1,500 -111,500

As a sometimes shareholder of MSFT, maybe I just don’t dig deeply enough into things. Maybe it’s all out there already. But, if it’s not out there already, this sheet would go a long way to helping me figure out what’s going on in Redmond.

#000000
#1d3147
#415973
#9dacb9
#4c3724
#897661
#d1c8c0
#ffffff