ChinaCache is a publicly traded CDN (CCIH) that has generated sales of $223M in 2014. They are one China’s premier CDNs, and count many Fortune 500 companies as customers, serving the needs of those requiring content delivery within China. Just recently, ChinaCache introduced NovaCDN, a new CDN division that pretty much does what ChinaCache does. My guess is the reason they decided to create a sister CDN is because of the name ChinaCache. It doesn’t make sense for a CDN to call themselves FranceCDN, SpainCDN, USACDN, BrazilCDN or anything similar. After all, the basic premise behind a CDN service is that its global in nature.
Words are extremely powerful in conveying a message to the consumer, and they create a mental picture that influences buying behavior. The grouping of words is even more powerful, and extremely difficult to conjure up, even for some CDNs. At Bizety, we do a lot of word play, always trying to figure out the words that paint a mental picture in 3 seconds or less. Thus, when we coined the phrase “CDN-in-a-Docker” for Appcito, and “CDN Edge-Compute-as-a-Service ” for Mirror-Image, that was our goal. Simple stupid is awesome, however, sometimes words do more harm than good. The very first thought that comes to mind when reading NovaCDN is a CDN that doesn’t go anywhere.
NovaCDN is a CDN That Doesn’t Go Anywhere
In Spanish, no va means “it doesn’t go anywhere”. Thus, NovaCDN is a CDN that doesn’t go anywhere, as when a CDN customer loads their content to a CDNs cache servers, it just stays there for minutes. Nova is not the right word to use for a CDN, especially since there are 500M Spanish speakers in the world. There is still time to do a name change, since the NovaCDN Alexa ranking is 22M. Didn’t mean to be the bearer of bad news, but we’re all human and we all make mistakes, especially moi. For more on the Nova name, check out the Chevrolet Nova Story, a marketing story of legends, even if not true. If you need help, hit me up for some ideas at no charge, this one is on the house.