Interesting problem. I was the one who started the previous thread
about the naming.
>When I'm talking with the management of a potential customer, I
>neither use the tag line, nor do we read over the website together...
>it's more that I offer a solution which can do this and that, works
>reliably as shown by some things, and so on. It's called Bacula, is
>open source, etc. pp.
My previous and current experience is opposite. I work or have worked
very closely with CIO/CTOs of various lines of businesses at our firm
(Fortune 10 company) which has close to 70k servers. You would be
amazed how much these people know the technical aspects of software
since most of them were previous programmers but came to the darkside
-- MBA :-) These are the final decision makers. My team is very
hesitant to propose open source software primarily because of strange
names (assuming the license is free enough).
>In fact, if they want to talk about those things, they probably know a
>web server called "apache", whose name is also quite ridiculous. Or
>think about "Thunderbird" - that's a complete nonsense name if you
>want to relate it to the products function - Bacula, at least, refers
>to the actual function of the product.
The name "Apache" is weird indeed but you are also stating Bacucla's
has the reputation of the world's most popular Webserver. In addition,
Apache is a "frontend" application, where backup software is
considered extreme backend.
>Given the company's intentions, if you're sure that tag line has to go
>or to be replaced, I would suggest you start a poll on this mailing
>list and forward the result... I'm pretty sure Kern (who's IP the name
>and tag line are, probably) will consider any such request, though I'm
>also sure he's quite fond of both name and tag line (actually, by now,
>I share that fondness :-)
Many people face this. For instance, we initially suggested
"PostgreSQL" for one of our Retail Data warehouse -- 500TB at that
time -- and the execs were frightened. Once we changed the name to
"EnterpriseDB" and stated we have a support contract with them it was
a done deal. The end users have been extremely happy and the cost were
almost 20x cheaper than compared RDBMS.
I think Bacucla should take a page from Apple's marketing department,
instead of calling their next OS revision, "Uncia uncia" they are
calling it "Snow Leopard" which is in line of their naming scheme and
easy to present to the end user.
Personally, I think Bacula is a great product. Its a good replacement
for TSM to a certain degree and extremely cost cutting but I doubt it
will make a lot of leadway to the enterprise without proper marketing.
However, it will be popular in SMB sector.
Just my 2 cents....
On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Arno Lehmann <al AT its-lehmann DOT de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> 04.02.2009 18:13, Foo wrote:
>> On Sat, 31 Jan 2009 08:02:14 +0100, Dan Langille <dan AT langille DOT org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Jan 30, 2009, at 3:07 PM, Arno Lehmann wrote:
>>
>>>> When I'm talking with the management of a potential customer, I
>>>> neither use the tag line, nor do we read over the website together...
>>
>> Right, so you filter. Which is not always possible.
>
> Well, I agree, though personally, I never encountered such a
> situation. Which might be because, most of the time now, potential
> customers contact me, and not vice versa :-)
>
>>>> In fact, if they want to talk about those things, they probably know a
>>>> web server called "apache", whose name is also quite ridiculous.
>>
>> It's not how fanciful a name is, but the (unintended) connotations.
>
> I really fail to see the negative connotations... still.
>
>>
>>> All product evaluation should start with a list of requirements. We all
>>> know about requirements collection. From there, you evaluate the
>>> available products. Often points are awarded for various features.
>>
>> In my case we are byond the requirements stage, this is about selling it
>> to third parties. Incidentally, I got a reply which concisely stated that
>> no third party software may be installed, so the issue was deftly avoided,
>> but I'm pretty sure the above played a part.
>>
>>> I have yet to see any requirements which specified "nice name" or
>>> "non-tacky by line".
>>
>> Sure, but back in the real world marketing is king. The current Bacula
>> marketing doesn't score points in some quarters, whether you like it or
>> not (and eventually if you want to compete you have to compromise, whether
>> you have 'do no evil' as your motto or not (see China)).
>>
>>> We have much bigger and better fish to fry. Worrying about potential
>>> users who clearly do not have their priorities in order is not on our
>>> top 10 list.
>>
>> Hey, I'm just trying to help, illustrated with example.
>
> ... and I guess the fact that people still read and answer this thread
> shows you we appreciate that!
>
>>> If we were out to make money, these issues have much more merit.
>>
>> I thought that was the object of Bacula Systems.
>
> Hmm... in fact, Bacula Systems SA tries to keep separate from the
> open-source project (though this might be hard to believe, as some of
> the core developers are involved in the company as well). In other
> words, even if you explained your worries to Bacula System's marketing
> department, the response from the users community would still be a
> most important factor.
>
> Given the company's intentions, if you're sure that tag line has to go
> or to be replaced, I would suggest you start a poll on this mailing
> list and forward the result... I'm pretty sure Kern (who's IP the name
> and tag line are, probably) will consider any such request, though I'm
> also sure he's quite fond of both name and tag line (actually, by now,
> I share that fondness :-)
>
> Arno
>
> --
> Arno Lehmann
> IT-Service Lehmann
> Sandstr. 6, 49080 Osnabrück
> www.its-lehmann.de
>
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