Do any of the following company names, A. Datum Corp, City Power & Light, Contoso Ltd., or Fabrikam Inc. have a familiar ring to them? Spouse-man was working from home today and he watched some fascinating, not, Microsoft lectures. Yes, they have those, some are even quite good and useful and geared toward end-users but these were boring corporate security stuff so I mostly tuned them out but I kept hearing the speakers mention company names that sounded familiar and then they’d show corporate materials from these companies and d’you know what, they are all fictional companies and yes, they sounded familiar because Microsoft has been using them in every tutorial and help example you or I have ever seen! Here’s the scoop:
Wikipedia says, Microsoft uses a variety of fictional companies in the documentation and training material for its products. Microsoft documentation and learning materials often contain fictional scenarios and descriptions of how their products can be deployed and used in these scenarios. Many of these companies are used in such examples. Some of the fictional companies have associated websites, almost all of which redirect to Microsoft.com.
Click the link for a complete table of Microsoft fictional companies and their usage: List of fictional Microsoft companies – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Inga Duncan Thornell 