Origin of our Productnames

What is the origin of your productnames?
This or a similar question we get when we do a presentation of offer a product. We think that it might be of interest to tell the story of our productnames in this place.

In general, creating a productname is always a challenge. Everything starts with an internal codename for a project. But there is a moment, when the final productname must be found to start with sales.
This is the, a bit weird story, of our productnames.
Everthing starts back in the year 2000 when we were asked by a customer to provide a simplified version of OpenConnects Management Server. This customer felt that he only needs a portion of this functionality and therefore told us that he find the OC://WebConnect Management Server too expensive and also to featureful.
So we started to design and concept a limited version and offered this as SAGA.MSEV. The meaning behind MSEV was Management Server Entry Version.
SAGA.MSEV was built, implemented and is still working today. A web-based user interface was designed that provided the function to administrate and watch the server and the observed platforms.
Nearly two years later, we were in the middle of the public tender of the BRZ, we were extending SAGA.MSEV. New Functions like Load-Balancing the implementing of OC://WebConnect PRO and the first preparation to provide SNMP Information were done.Also the user interfaced was redesigned. This project was given to a trainee. Because we felt that it is a good idea to also teach the trainees on SNMP, we discussed the functionality of Management Servers and found relation in the Secret Service. Agents in an closedarea provide only information when they are contacted except for emergency messages, they broadcast a message. During a day of training, the new layout of the user interface was presented. It covers the letters MSEV and our old logo which had a diagonal bar from the lower leftcorner to the upper right corner. This layout looked from the distance like a 7. So we played a bit with this 7 by talking about MI6 (the british secret service) and came to MI7. Now we simply removed the "I" and got M7.
Even the Letters of MSEVEN did make sense by interpreting Management Server Entry Version ENhanced. So we called the new enhanced product SAGA.M7

Anyhow, this does not provide an explanation to the remaining names. When we started to find a name to our new product SAGA.M31 - Galaxy - that was internally called "iCargo" we had several Brainstorming sessions. Besides others we also discussed that this product opens a new view to data access which is the same evolution like the view that people had in the sixteenth century when the believed that the earth is a flat disc. So we left the view of the Earth and moved into the Galaxies. This was the start of the name Galaxy. Doing some research on images for a galaxy, we suddenly found an image called M31 which is equivalent to the Andromeda Galaxy.
Now it made click. Was there also an object called M7? Of course there is. We simply found the numbering scheme of Messier who cataloged about 100 objects.
From now on, we assigned every product a name from the Messier Catalog. The final decision was then done by the graphical worker who did the abstraction of the objects based on our idea.
That means, we still have approximately 97 free productnames that we can choose. Elsewise there are other name schemas available in the astronimic scene to find other good names.

An overview of the Messier Catalog can be found unter http://www.seds.org/messier/.