Why it was named LAIKA?
As you know our digital platform called LAIKA. It's a strange name especially for software product (but it become more and more widespread in the last few years). This article explain why we use this name (or even better to say naming convention) for our platform and our products.
There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.
-- Phil Karlton
It works for our team as well. It's not so complex to implement something new and advanced. It's hard to name it. There was several options but at the end we decided to name it after the first dog in space. Laika was launched on soviet Sputnik 2 in November 1957. It was a huge step forward in space program and Laika was a first living creature who did a space flight open a path to a man. It was a great idea to memorize this event in the name of our platform. And it makes sense: our platform is modern and unique.
It also provided us with a huge set of options: we decided to name each of our applications that cover some specific business area after some space dog (there was more of them). Our DAM application also named Laika. For PCM and MCM applications we decided to use names of Belka and Strelka. These dogs performed a fully-functional space flight on Sputnik 5 in August 1960, spent more than 25 hours on the orbit and then successfully landed.
We also have a solution that allows users to perform creation of digital publications using assets stored in DAM. We named this solution Pushinka. Pushinka is a snow-white puppy of space dog Strelka that was provided by USSR goverment to Jacqueline Kennedy as a gift after small talk between her and Khruschev during their meeting in Vienna. You could find more details about this interesting story here.
We think that all of these stories are worth to mention, and it was right decision to create such "space dog naming convention". Our platform is growing fast, we're implementing new applications to cover various use-cases and business areas, but there is no naming problem anymore: we have a long list of astro dogs names to use.
