Author Topic: The process of choosing a new name for eBox  (Read 3817 times)

Roxane

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The process of choosing a new name for eBox
« on: August 12, 2010, 10:27:49 am »
Well, at the beginning, no need to precise that we were all expecting to feel a deep heartache when time would come to find a new name for eBox Platform. But quickly, this feeling  has been replaced by the satisfaction to see our "child" growing up, becoming more consistent, developing its own personality. And, from my point of view, this is definitely how any name change should be considered: as a milestone in the history of the project we have been working on for so long.

By choosing a new name, I believe we are just helping the project to grow up, to make a new step, to help it to keep growing without denying the past. This has been a big process for the whole eBox Team, but it is important to keep in mind that the only purpose of this change is to better reflect the goals of the project as well as to customize and endow it with a name that could better reflect its innovative and amazing features we believe in.

As Ignacio already wrote in his post, the reason for changing the name of eBox Platform was first and foremostly because of the fact that There is no Box. We are not selling server hardware, eBox Platform is much more than that and people need to be aware of that. The company aims at promoting innovative software, technical support, and training services too and we felt that the new name needed to reflect better the whole range services we offer. Furthermore, the name eBox (even eBox Platform) was already used by a number of other businesses. Not to mention that we felt it was time to make the change Now or never: in a moment when the company and the project are growing and getting more and more popular, we needed a name that would reaffirm its qualities through a consistent name. Which moment would have been more appropriate for the change than when launching eBox Platform 2.0?

So the first questions when starting the process of choosing a new name have been: Which are the main goals of the project and what values we want the new name to reflect? In addition we wanted a name that would fulfill most of the following conditions: Easy to pronounce, Easy to remember, Meaningful of eBox Platform (easy, network, SMB, etc), Short, .com domain available, No similar trademark in our segment... Quite hard to fulfill all these requirements and to reach an agreement on only one or a couple of words! But I think we finally did it!

After having proposed over 1.000 names, to agree on the final winner, about 85 names were evaluated (see how creative we are!) and then we rated them with a note from 1 to 5 according to five criteria. Thus, we took into account the easiness of the name, its consistence with our positioning strategy, its availability, the lack of legal risks and finally, the easiness of the change management. Let's just say that among the 85 candidates, we found some different inspirations: from easy-related to absurd, conceptual, sound-based, mythology-related names. In the end, we had three names in the finals (don't count on me to reveal them...!) and after a more exhaustive analysis according to the criteria earlier mentioned, we were left with one single name that will be published next week!

After such a long process that involved all the eBox Team members, we believe that the new name is much more than a "marketing thing": it is the spirit of the company and the project we have been defending for years! We hope that our final choice will not disappoint you and we would appreciate your support in telling the world about the new eBox Platform!