Microsoft drops the Azure branding | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft drops the Azure branding

neowin.net

15 pointsDenDen15 comments

Generally, I will never say something like this for any team, but in this case, I have to say it. Microsoft needs to fire their branding team.

First, Windows Live and now this. Make up your mind already. Think little bit more before you decide your branding so that you don't have to change it a year down the line.

Personally, I don't think there was anything wrong with 'Azure' brand. The way to build the brand would be to offer such a fantastic product that everyone associates 'Azure' with Microsoft's cloud offering [E.g. no one 'Searches' anymore, they 'Google' it]. Changing names around only creates confusion and nothing more.

Is it that, or is it that they're firing their branding team a bit too often? Or that they don't really have one at all?

A lot of stores I've read suggest that Microsoft generally leaves various divisions and teams within the company to fend for themselves, marketing-wise. Any stabs they make at doing any company-wide re-branding always smell more like a PHB's flight of fancy than the brainchild of a marketing genius to me.

Always re.

They need to fire the VP's and whatnot who think branding is the critical differentiator.

I don't care what you call it, as long as it works, well -- and sticks around.

I work on Azure (billing, to be specific) and helped make this change. We looked at the bill and decided to simplify it. That's all. I'm amazed at how bloggers took this out of proportion - this is not part of some uber-corporate rebranding move. Relax, people.

Can you confirm whether the email quoted in the article is, in fact, the entire email that was sent out? If it is, it's just too vague; I think anyone reading that email would think, "They are dropping the Azure brand/name" given the recent "Windows Live" re-branding. I also think that a lot of people hated "Windows Live" so strongly that they might have been rooting for another "See how dumb MSFT marketing is?" moment.

Does Microsoft have a group that does nothing but rebrand their services? I can see a rebrand of one product once in a while, but they've been making a habit of it.

Yes, Marketing

The article doesn't really match the headline as this really only confirms the change to billing.

Agreed, the headline is a huge leap from the source, which amounts to: We are simplifying the labels on your bill in the following ways...

Agreed, the title feels very "link baitish", the text of the email sent out says they're changing the names of the Azure services in the usage reports.

IMO this makes sense, if I'm receiving an Azure Usage Report I don't need to see a line item for "Azure CDN" when "CDN" covers it perfectly well.

There's nothing indicated anywhere that there is any change to the Azure brand at all.

No story here, move along.

Hrmm.. I think the REALLY IMPORANT thing to notice is not that they dropped "Azure" but that they dropped "Windows" as well. Everything in the list that had "Windows" in it, does not have it anymore.

This is a step in the right direction if MS wants to survive long-term.

Heh, I literally just read the email from the Azure team right now. I'm not quite sure it means they're rebranding everything though. There's a lot of money put behind the Azure name.

But, simplifying the features and service names would be a good move. I've been with Azure since the early beta days and the branding and naming of services was always confusing. In fact, I missed many features early on simply because I had no idea what they were packaged under.

I think this is a smart move by MS. The name Azure didn't cause people to immediately think of cloud services, while this renaming makes it much more clear.

Alt headline: Microsoft continues to misunderstand the concept of branding.

Alt Alt Headline: Creator of this Hacker News article has misunderstood the difference between labels in your billing and product branding.

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