Tpfkat Will we always call it Tridion?

Question

The product formerly known as Tridion, tpfkat, not to be confused with tafkap, the artist formerly known as Prince, should be known as its new name "SDL Web 8".

Yet the popular name, Tridion, still persists. I can't think that I will ever get anything useful out of google if I search for "Web8" or "Web 8" it does not seem as strong a brand name as Tridion still is.

Why keep changing the names of the SDL products? Don't get me started on "Experience Manager". I just don't get it.

I vote to keep calling it Tridion.

Answer 1

I kind of understood when they renamed Tridion to SDL Tridion. If you are trying to build a global brand, you want all your "sub brands" contribute to the global one. Even then, we kept using #tridion in Twitter, while those in the employ of SDL had to use #sdltridion. This was reasonable, as everyone in the community still called it Tridion. Nobody says IBM Websphere or ORACLE Java. We know that a product has a "Sunday name", but we commonly use a less formal version.

I really don't understand why, having already experienced these minor irritations with the earlier name change, it wasn't higher on the marketing department's priority list to ensure that any name change would also be good for the community around the product.

We will have to keep calling it Tridion if we are to maintain continuity for all the various community assets that are "out there". Imagine the silliness of "Dynamic Delivery for TPFKAT". I don't imagine TridionDeveloper.com will change its name, and neither will Tridion Practice, or a host of other things.

The new name was ill-considered, if only because it made it far more difficult to Google for it. It still makes sense to Google for Tridion, because most related web sites still have the old name somewhere. SDL is a long established graphics library, and Web is so generic it might as well be a stop word.

As for the future, we can't guess what SDL will do. Maybe they will find a way to bring back the Tridion name, but I'm not holding my breath.

Answer 2

Please note that I am not here to defend the rename...

Well, there's a few things I can add to this discussion (and happy to). First of all, the product known as "SDL Web" is not Tridion. Tridion is what we commonly refer to as "Core" within SDL, and it comprises of everything you see in the CM installer. UGC, Audience Manager, CM, CD, etc.

SDL Web, the product, also includes Digital Media Management and Experience Optimization (aka SmartTarget).

The naming of this solution was also not made "just to piss off the implementers". This was part of an SDL-wide naming strategy while building up the "Customer Experience Cloud" intended to map the name of products to their capabilities. As part of this rebranding/renaming exercise several other product names were changed:

• Fredhopper -> ECommerce Optimization
• LiveContent -> Knowledge Center
• Campaign Manager -> Campaigns
• Tridion + Add-ons -> SDL Web

One could argue (as I do) whether Tridion really is doing "Web". I definitely know of many implementations where Tridion distributes content to channels that I wouldn't really call "Web", but then again, I'm not the one deciding on product names.

Anyway, SDL did make quite a few decisions in the recent past regarding where we want to be, and a CTRL-Z on the rename is not out of the question (that plus the fact that pretty much anyone that was driving the product rename has left the company). As Dominic says though, don't hold your breath. If I need to decide where the company effort goes to with regards to the product (and as head of Product Management, I actually do decide on that) then renaming it is quite low on my priority list.

The good thing is that since we use our own products for documentation... renaming the product again won't take as long as it took the last time. The beauty of DITA...

Answer 3

** Update October 2017**

SDL* Tridion DX

SDL Tridion Sites: Web Experience Management announced at SDLConnect17