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As of today, we announced that we're changing the name of the company from DeviceVM Inc to Splashtop Inc. “Isn't Splashtop already the name of the product?” you might be thinking.

Well, yes. And that's kind of the point.  The decision to change the name of the company was not simply a whimsical idea,  but rather one very notable outcome of a broad-reaching strategic branding process led by company advisor and friend, David Riemer, the former VP of Marketing at Yahoo! and current executive-in-residence at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Now we collectively envision a single “master” brand that reflects both the company mission as well as an expanding family of products.

How did we get here?

This past summer the co-founders began thinking a lot about a brand strategy with respect to several new products on the horizon. Unlike our flagship Splashtop product--the instant-on platform that is often re-branded our many PC OEM customers--many of the new products (or product line extensions) would be coming available directly to consumers. Take Splashtop Remote, for example, a product launched near the end of August that has seen tremendous success recently in climbing the charts of the App Store.

So our executive team gathered for several intensive, introspective sessions with David over the course of 8 weeks and concluded we had a valuable brand asset in the "Splashtop" name that was well worth elevating and investing in. We found examples of other successful, innovative companies -- including Motorola, Oracle and Xerox -- all of which shed their original company name in favor of a more recognizable and growing brand.

So in many ways, dropping "DeviceVM" in favor of Splashtop is an evolution of sorts, a nod to the fact that there are people out there -- be they strategic partners or consumer end-users --for whom Splashtop has meaning. It is a foundation from which to build -- both more useful, innovative products and a more approachable, recognizable brand for the company. Launching Splashtop Remote was the first visible step toward executing this strategy; now changing the name of the company follows suit.

But wait, there's more -- coming soon. And you can bet it will be connected to Splashtop.