Branding Genius
Microsoft are popular right now for renaming Microsoft Office to Microsoft 365 Copilot App, but did you know they’ve always been bad at branding?
Microsoft Rights Management is a particularly dry piece of bread, microwaved and then toasted to make it palatable. It’s tasked with the challenge of controlling document integrity in and outside your domain.
Its exact functions and features are vague and analogous, as such Microsoft have had a historical problem marketing it, and it’s gone through a few different branding iterations over the years, getting dryer, growing mould, and though you can tear until it looks sort of edible, it tastes sour and smells like bleach, that can’t be good for you.
So extensive is this problem that Microsoft once had a documentation page dedicated entirely to listing and describing Microsoft Rights Management’s many names. Sadly, it’s now removed, further muddying our dry, mouldy bread, I suppose they were embarrassed, luckily you can still find it on archive.org.
Even in this snapshot, there’s a ! Note pop-up desperately clarifying that this is different to “Microsoft Purview Information Protection”, though if you closely examined the feature set you might start to wonder if that slice is from the same loaf.
Anyway, here’s every single name this product has had since its inception:
- Azure Information Protection
- Azure Rights Management
- Azure Rights Management service
- Azure RMS
- Microsoft Entra Rights Management
- AADRM
- Windows Azure Active Directory Rights Management (This one’s my favourite)
- Windows Azure AD Rights Management
- Active Directory Rights Management Services
- AD RMS
- Windows Rights Management Services
- Windows RMS
- Microsoft Rights Management
- Microsoft Rights Management services
- The NEW Microsoft RMS (Second favourite)
- Information Rights Management
- IRM
- Rights Management Online
- RMS Online
Even now, this product’s name is evolving, the old link directs to Azure Rights Management encryption service, is that the same thing? Is this just a subset? Oh but this product is also a part of Purview, so shouldn’t it be called Purview Rights Management Encryption Service?
These questions will not be answered by me or Microsoft, today or tomorrow, good luck.
If I were them, I wouldn't even try baking new bread, I'd do something else, sausage rolls maybe, or Software Development who knows it might work out.
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