DWA is now rebranding back to ...... iNotes. Common sense seems to have prevailed. DWA was one of the dumbest naming conventions IBM had done in a while. Other beauties during the "dark era" of Lotus (1999-2003), were when they tried to separate the products and re-brand them by function, like "QuickPlace" was renamed "IBM Lotus Team Workplace", "Sametime IM" was to become "IBM Lotus Instant Messaging" and "Lotus Sametime" (e-meetings) was rebranded "IBM Lotus Web Conferencing").  

DWA, I think was trying to chase Microsoft's OWA 'Outlook Web Access'. I don't know why making a product sound more complicated or by breaking it down into little pieces, makes it easier to reach a large consumer base who just look at it as email or IM. People generally new Lotus Notes as an email client. What the heck was Domino Web Access then ? It was probably part of a strategy at the time, no doubt. But I don't think many in user-land new of it, nor cared for it either.

So, iNotes in the web era made sense. Kinda good, it's intuitive, if you new Lotus Notes, iNotes was obvious. But in terms of functional awareness, I know it sells Lotus Notes far short of it's real capabilities. But this is the point, it is easier to reach you market calling it something familiar rather then "Lotus Enterprise thingy-majingy". I thought I could find something positive to say about those mis-guided souls who battered the product naming for Lotus like taking a mallet to peaches, but I can't really, it was terrible.

The "i" something or other prefixing seems to have stuck, as opposed to "e" which is soooo out of favour now, like flares and shoulder pads. Now that we have the iPhone in the last couple of years, Apple seem to be a benchmark on vogue concepts and branding. IBM are working hard to associate themselves with Apple on the iPhone, so it's not really surprising that iNotes would make a comeback either. Hopefully this tragic foray into obscure and complicated branding will now be buried forever, and we can now educate customers without the need to write down product names on stick-it notes.