A product nomenclature is very important aspect. It not only gives unique identity to the product but also helps a customer to understand the product evolution with different versions.
Recently I have gone through the complete business suite of SAP. While looking into different products, I found that product names are not consistent and changes year after year. The release document was required to be handy to know what the given product was named earlier and how it is known today. It is not possible for someone who is out of SAP for some time to understand what current trend is.
It makes consultant's life difficult as the information is not available at one central place. One has to search through different SAP portals (help.sap.com, service.sap.com etc) to assure the products information. E.g. SAP SRM 2007 & SAP SRM 7.0 are many a times interpreted as same product versions by consultants. This is due to the fact that most of products were renamed to 7.0 version after NetWeaver 7.0 release. Another example for this is of SAP Solution Manager 4.0, which was renamed to SAP Solution Manager 7.0. Commonly known Web Application Server (WAS) is now known as Application Server.
E.g.
Product Versions Evolution for SAP SRM -
SAP SRM 3.0
SAP SRM 4.0
SAP SRM 5.0
SAP SRM 2007
SAP SRM 7.0
Old Name - SAP Supplier Relationship Management 6.0
New Name - SAP Supplier Relationship Management 2007
Old Name - mySAP Supplier Relationship Management 2005
New Name - SAP Supplier Relationship Management 2005
Old Name - mySAP ERP 2005
New Name - ERP 6.0
Old Name - SAP NetWeaver 2004s
New Name - SAP NetWeaver 7.0
Old Name - SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment 1.0
New Name - SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment 7.1
