Not just that - there's a significant ecosystem around Redis. A huge number of client libraries and tools.
Which is why Microsoft's new drop-in replacement works with all those things. It could gain traction - who knows.
> It's all about branding and name recognition
I don't think so. The only thing they need to let their customers know is that they offer a memory cache service that is compatible with this or that interface. Whether it's Redis, memcache, Garnet, or whatever it might be, it matters nothing at all. All they need to do is ensure clients can consume their service, and that is it.
This whole thing sounds like a desperate cash grab that fails to argue any point on why it's in anyone's best interests to spend small fortunes on nothing at all.
Then their cloud-specific solutions are the up-sell (and lock-in).