Windows Azure Service Name Update – emPHAsis on the Wrong syLLAble

Last night, Windows Azure customers received an email from the Windows Azure Team with “Service Name Updates” in the subject. The first paragraph of the email reads:

In the coming weeks, we will update the Windows Azure Service names that appear in the usage records you download. These are only name changes – your prices for Windows Azure are not impacted. The table below summarizes the changes:

This table followed:

Nowhere in the email was there mention of the Windows Azure name going away, in fact Windows Azure was used eight times in the email excluding the previous table. However, social media and bloggers have developed a conspiracy theory that the Windows Azure brand is history. I would suggest that they completely missed the forest for the trees. If you look at the Prior Service Names for the Windows Azure Platform services, they fall into three major buckets, Windows Azure, AppFabric and SQL Azure. In the New Service Names, there is no mention of those three.

I would suggest that instead of this being a move to deprecate the Windows Azure brand, this might be a move to reduce confusion and consolidate more on the Windows Azure name.