Software branding seems to be in the hands of imbeciles.

What is it about these big software companies and their inability to come up with decent branding of their products (and companies)?

Taaadah! Microsoft enter the service desk market (the Fat ITSM Four just became the Fat Five). We've known it was coming for quite a while, but the wraps are starting to come off. Fresh off the news wire from Redmond:

SAN DIEGO, March 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- At the Microsoft Management Summit 2007 (MMS 2007) today, Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Server and Tools Business at Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), outlined how Microsoft is delivering on its Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) through investments and partnerships that blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah ... the first public beta of Microsoft System Center Service Manager offering (formerly code named "Service Desk") available in 30 days blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

So the product is to be known as MS System Center Service Manager, much as HP is merging OpenView Service Center and OpenView Service Desk together into HP Service Manager.

I'm sure all these marketing guys drink in the same pub. Apparently it is trendy to drop brands: CA are burying the Unicenter brand too. The IT Swami says Remedy is next. I never cease to marvel at these branding gurus. I thought the re-branding of Computer Associates to CA was genius. Cut loose all that negative baggage of the old name. Completely changed my perception of them overnight. Was worth whatever millions CA paid to work that one out.

Seriously, these companies spend a decade building good solid brand recognition like Unicenter and OpenView then chuck it out like last year's shoes while on the other hand their CEOs drag the company name through the mud and the courts (both companies) and they decide to keep it. Meanwhile, the worst ops software brand of them all, Tivoli, hangs on like the smell of old pizza. Go figure.

And now the company that is only marginally less rich than Magrathea deploys their finest branding talent to come up with [drum roll] Microsoft System Center Service Manager. Catchy. Succinct. Iconic. Lilting, even. And not to be confused with Microsoft Service Manager, which we all own already (Start>>Programs>>Administrative tools).

At least they haven't changed "Microsoft": the irony of the "micro" got left behind long ago. And of course "IBM" must be one of the best brands on earth. But there is something special about operational software that attracts some of the world's worst marketing.

I guess it is hardly glamorous. It can't be easy to come up with automobile names either, but I don't drive a Toyota Propulsion Systems Sedan Transporter. Even Boeing 747 is catchy. The niche guys do better with Heat and Marval and Infra, but the Fat Five are locked in some vortex of corporate numb-speak that honours the bland and the clumsy.

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