The technology industry has many virtues. creativity in naming is not always one of them. Some of the industry's biggest brands are also the blandest. "Microsoft" is just "microcomputer" and "software" squished together. Intel? "INTegrated ELectronics."

So perhaps it's not surprising that two of the biggest trends in computing--open-source software and cloud computing--have been accompanied by some of the most staid company naming conventions ever.

For open source, it became de rigueur to include the name "source" in the company name, as a way to signal that the company was the source of the open-source project in question, and hence the "bank" to which would-be customers should be making a deposit. (The other reason, as open-source veteran Larry Augustin often points out, is that combining the company name and project name makes branding much easier.)

And so the open-source companies wore "source" proudly on their sleeves: XenSource, MuleSource, SpringSource, SpikeSource, SourceSense, Sourcefire, and more.

It's a telling shift in the market