Another Stellar Product Name From Microsoft

Microsoft just announced the availability of “OWA for iPhone and iPad.” I was, of course, very excited to have yet another email client for my iPad but I was confused about what exactly Microsoft had launched because of its unintuitive product name.

Most people in the corporate tech field know OWA to mean “Outlook Web Access” which is Microsoft’s web-based interface for accessing email hosted on corporate exchange servers. When I read OWA I assumed this was a web-based mobile app that you would access through a browser similar to the old “OWA.” This didn’t make sense to me since I knew that newer versions of OWA already had a somewhat serviceable mobile view.

After reading the press releases I learned that OWA now means “Outlook Web App” (at least in this context) and that Microsoft had actually released a native email app for iOS that has a Metro interface. Oh, and it only works with Office365 accounts.

At least the name isn’t as bad some of Microsoft’s other greatest hits!