Same issue with “SmartReports” and “Report Exporter”. I can’t tell you how many clients have no idea why the two differ or which one they need.

I do understand the pain of product naming, however, so I empathize. However, consistency is paramount IMHO.

Thanks for clearing it up, and thanks for entertaining my little jokes!

Thanks for your comments. You have stumbled upon our dirty little secret! We spend hours and hours plotting devious ways to jostle up the users of our products. And, changing product names is one of our favorites. Please don’t tell anyone.

All kidding aside, you pose a very good question, “Why the change?” Over the past couple of years, Webtrends has evolved from a company focused on web analytics to one focused on a broader value proposition of digital marketing optimization. With this evolution comes more products (organically developed and acquired), many new services offerings, and regrettably, a more complex brand architecture.

I am a firm believer in making it easy for prospects and customers to understand the problems you solve, how you solve them, and the benefits they can expect by solving those problems. In support of this belief, we are using major product releases as opportunities to create more concise, consumable, and value-oriented messaging. Product names play a big role in this endeavor. The guiding principles of our product brand architecture are:
• Product names should be literal and descriptive
• Select names that speak specifically to what the product does or the benefits realized
• Use a consistent lexicon to create an easy to understand taxonomy
• Minimize the number of product names and branded ingredients (i.e. SmartView)
• Names should be simple and have sufficient audio and visual clarity

We are very excited by the Analytics v9 On Premises release as it represents the availability of major innovations and enhancements for customers who want to self-manage their deployments. In this case, Analytics is the product name and On Premises is a modifier to describe the deployment method. I agree, “On Premises” took a bit to get used to saying. However, not only is it grammatically correct, it creates consistency with the On Demand version.

I hope that gives you some insight into the madness. Thank you for your business.

Cheers,

Casey

-It’s too entry level, that’s bad and makes this test worthless to any organization attempting to quantify someone’s WA skill set. (Waste of time and money IMHO – just a revenue raising activity for WAA)

-The answers from WAA people in the comments seem to only condone more of the status quo – (ie: “the test is going to be longer!” Which I read as it is more of the same watered down garbage that anyone can pickup with a little common sense, half a brain and fist of cash.

-In my mind, the certification must mean something or people in the industry will just laugh at it, while people outside the industry will be mislead by it and somewhere puppies will be put to sleep each time someone takes the test. (the last item about puppies probably won’t happen, but I’m seeing the WAA likened to a level of evil if it continues in its current trajectory – who runs this place anyway?)

PS – I obviously obfuscated my name to avoid retribution. My name does not matter in this debate.

Please moderate me to suit your blog comments!