iNotes Soapbox Rant: Will the Real iNotes Stand up

Original title:iNotes Soapbox Rant: The Name is Pissy Duck
The name is from a "book" my son dictated to his teacher in school last year, 5 years old, his big sister reads to him but she doesn't always get the pronunciation correct. The real name is Psyduck and is a Pokemon thing.

Now my rant.

Prior to R8 it was called everything from webmail to shimmer.

R8 came out and we had Domino Web Access and it was good, much better than R7's and now had lite and full mode.

R8.5 came out and we had iNotes again replacing DWA and this client rocks and has ultralite for iPhones!

Ed Brill posted about this last year. And the comments show it was not a great idea to change the branding/naming then.

Now we have LotusLive iNotes which, wait for it, is NOT iNotes found on a Domino server.

Huh?

Yes, you see IBM has decided the brand name is important, not necessarily the product itself. IBM evidently now refers to webmail as iNotes, whether it is Notes and Domino based or not, and this version is definitely not. Maybe IBM is after the iNotes Family and there is more to come from it, but this is not a good idea. See Websphere family and to a similar extent Sharepoint Family products that leave many confused.

The company IBM bought, Outblaze will be performing the iNotes one will see from LotusLive.

Now when Microsoft bought Hotmail they never rebranded it Outlook? Sure they rebranded it as MSN Hotmail, now WindowsLive but never called it Outlook officially.

So where does this leave us as Business Partners, you as customers and the world at large from a product awareness or branding? No idea, maybe no one cares, but I for one think this is false advertising and just plain confusing to sales people and customers.

Lotus, the brand, as much as I love it, just doesn't deserve to be seen in this light which will surely provide ample flames to competitors.

Please IBM, name the LotusLive iNotes something else, anything else.

Done ranting.