Sametime and QuickPlace -- they´re back!

June 14 2005

First news of the day out of Hannover....my colleague Adam Gartenberg writes:

With the 7.0 release of the products, we will be reverting to the Sametime and QuickPlace naming for our Domino instant messaging/Web conferencing and team space offerings. ...
We hope our decision to revert back to the original names gives an indication both of the value we place in feedback from our customers and business partners, as well as to serve as an indication of the continued importance these offerings play in our portfolio of collaboration software.
Note, this is not the big news of the day.  Not when it had been, uh, mentioned elsewhere in the last few weeks anyway...

Ed Brill Hannover, Deutschland Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [23]

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  1. 1  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 6/14/2005 2:45:10 AM

    I shouldn't really comment... perhaps best to focus on the good decision to revert back to the names people know and love (and still use) rather than the daft decision to change them in the first place. After all, if you go to the product pages on the Lotus web site, you still see the old names in brackets. If I say "Team Workplace" to a customer they look puzzled until I say "QuickPlace" - then they know what I'm talking about.

    I reckon this will save me 10 minutes per week... rather than having to say "IBM Lotus Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing, formerly known as Sametime" I can just say "Sametime". Well done marketing guys ;o)

  1. 2  Neil http://www.dominoconsultants.com | 6/14/2005 3:14:35 AM

    @1 really... I did not know anyone who actually used the new names, even every sales person from IBM used to say Quickplace ermmm... I mean "Lotus Team Workplace".

    It a good decision reversing a poor decision for IBM marketing (LOL - who would have thought !). However you could be cynical, and see it as a way of IBM differentiating between Notes/Domino products and "Workplace", a lot of people when you mentioned Team Workplace thought you meant Lotus Workplace.

  1. 3  Gerco Wolfswinkel http://www.domino-weblog.nl | 6/14/2005 3:15:07 AM

    A good decision indeed!

    Anyone care to bet if "Domino Web Access" will change back to "iNotes"? :-)

  1. 4  Neil http://www.dominoconsultants.com | 6/14/2005 3:15:52 AM

    @3 LOL - iNotes is much snappier...

  1. 5  Stu Mac http://www.uksatnavltd.com | 6/14/2005 3:18:02 AM

    Hurrah ;-) Can we give the Workplace products some decent brand names as well?? Whoever thought up "IBM Workplace Web Content Manager" really ought to be run out of town...

    Can anyone think of a snappy one word name for WCS??

  1. 6  Josef  | 6/14/2005 3:45:04 AM

    Well, what a about Linux version of that IM thingy. We have the license (with Domino 6.5) but I am not going to build a single Windows server for just this product.

  1. 7  Simon  | 6/14/2005 4:44:25 AM

    I know it goes somewhat against the "don't need to have Domino" nature of the products but considering that both QP and ST are fundamentally built on Domino technology and that if you are selling IM or team spaces into a new company you've effectively now got the choice between Domino-based and Websphere-based products, wouldn't it have made some sense to re-inforce the Domino heritage through the product name? After all, most would agree that IBM Lotus Domino Document Manager is better than Domino.Doc. Couldn't we have something closer to IBM Lotus Domino QuickPlace and IBM Lotus Domino Sametime? Surely this would re-iterate the commitment to and value of Domino-based solutions.

  1. 8  Subhan http://slate.blogspirit.com | 6/14/2005 5:14:43 AM

    dats cool :)

    In line with #5, all the other Workplace products should follow the same non-confusing style.

    Short one-word names will be easy to communicate & remember. Afterall these are the products for the masses.

  1. 9  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 6/14/2005 5:46:08 AM

    Waaaaaay! Nice one!

    "The Sanity strikes back!"

    --* Bill

  1. 10  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 6/14/2005 5:51:17 AM

    @3 - I think Domino Web Access has been embraced more widely and that name should stick. The iNotes 'brand' did include the previous iteration of accessing Domino via Outlook, but now that has a snappy new name of it's own (DAMO).

    Interesting fact: if you get the European version of Sega Soccer Slam on the Gamecube, and you unlock the bonus teams, one of the new players in Team Ohm is called Damo. Rather worrying is the fact that he looks like Osama Bin Laden.

  1. 11  Chris Whisonant http://cwhisonant.blogspot.com | 6/14/2005 7:44:00 AM

    Excellent! Anyone have any info on fixes/functionality in Sametime 7.0? Seem to remember someone telling me that IBM's been keeping this under wraps for some unknown reason. I'm sure we'll hear about it when we're supposed to. =)

  1. 12  Rob Novak http://www.lotusdigerati.com | 6/14/2005 7:49:22 AM

    Good choice IBM. And all this talk about being "snappy" just makes me smile :-).

    To be fair, I did wait until it was public in the QuickPlace forum on LDD before posting anything, and even then didn't completely give it away...just fun with sound files, that's all...

    Darn, just when we were approaching "Haiku status" with the product names:

    "IBM Lotus

    Instant Messaging and Web

    Conferencing"...Now, Breathe.

    Here's to "snappy" names!

    -Rob

    SNAPPS

  1. 13  Tim Latta  | 6/14/2005 10:26:00 AM

    Thank you.

  1. 14  Esther Strom http://esthermstrom.blogspot.com | 6/14/2005 10:40:03 AM

    @3 - iNotes makes it sound like a Mac product, and since it doesn't work on the Mac...

  1. 15  Hosun Lee  | 6/14/2005 10:55:45 AM

    I think the goal for 2006 should be to have every product name be three words or less. Or a really snazzy acronym.

    Seriously. If sales can't remember the product names, neither will customers.

  1. 16  Ross http://www.merauderweb.co.nz/ | 6/14/2005 3:11:41 PM

    A welcome change indeed. I've been running a Sametime pilot project recently, and have been getting a bit caught up with people wondering why I sometimes switch between referring to the product as "Sametime" and "IBM/Lotus instan......" etc.

  1. 17  Brian Benz http://www.softwaresoapbox.com | 6/14/2005 3:28:35 PM

    Woohoo! Great news! Perhaps there have been a few name changes in the department that cooked up the first name change.....

  1. 18  Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah  http://koranteng.blogspot.com/ | 6/15/2005 8:33:09 AM

    So I heard that sanity has returned to these parts...

    { Link }

    I posted this piece on May 18 on my internal blog but now that the information is no longer a rumour but has received confirmation, I decided to remove the embargo since it speaks to the tribal instinct in communities, something that interests me as an anthropologist of social software

  1. 19  Devin Olson http://www.devinolson.net | 6/15/2005 10:07:57 AM

    A welcome change indeed.

  1. 20  Dallas Gimpel  | 6/15/2005 11:41:42 AM

    Somewhat reminiscent of the Coca-Cola formula thing. Definitely a welcome change though. And a nice acknowledgement on IBM's part too.

  1. 21  Jochen TInn  | 6/16/2005 7:45:01 AM

    IBM.... Great work. Took you a long time to realize custommers dont obey to every thing someones insanity.... renaming things like "he" thinks it fits his portfolio.

    But i am happy to have my samtime and my quikplce back. What about dominodoc?????

  1. 22  Paul Mooney http://www.pmooney.net | 6/16/2005 3:26:35 PM

    I Dont mind losing iNotes. It sometimes caused confusion with the old DOLS client file anyway. As for the other changes...

    My thoughts { Link }

  1. 23  Ted Thomas www.eTG.biz | 6/20/2005 2:24:44 PM

    We are also MS partners, and they are just as bad with confusing names. The great thing about these names is that they actually convey a key element of what the software does in one word. Bravo!

    I wonder if MS will use 'Groove' somewhere? Probably not... sounds like a fusion jazz band, not software :-)