A
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
AWS is a collection of cloud computing services which is offered by Amazon. Amazon Web Services offers majorly three services span i.e. PaaS, IaaS, and SaaS models of cloud computing.
Auto-scaling
Auto-scaling makes full surety that you are having the right number of Amazon EC2 instances that are available to manage the application load.
Azure
Azure is a public cloud computing platform offered by Microsoft. It offers services like storage, computing, networking and analytics.
API
Application Programming Interface (API) is an endpoint which is exposed in the programming languages that provides important feature or behavior.
Apache Hadoop
Apache Hadoop is an open-source software framework that is used for storing and processing a larger set of data.
Adaptive Enterprise
Adaptive enterprises are flexible and have full capabilities to change and adjust in real-time by changing routines and practices in response to the environmental changes. Adaptive organizations continuously evolving in the global economy time and their services or products never being obsolete.
B
Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS)
Backend as a service (BaaS) or mobile backend as a service (mBaaS) is a cloud computing model under which the vendor offers web and mobile app developers with services and tools to build a cloud backend for their apps. BaaS uses custom SDKs and APIs for giving developers the ability to connect their apps to backend cloud storage and features like push notifications, user management, and social network integration.
Big Data
Big data is a huge term used for describing unconventional data sets that are either too large or too complex to deal with the use of traditional data-processing techniques.
BASE (basic availability, soft state, eventual consistency)
The BASE is an approach for storing that divides physical or virtual storage medium into independently addressable chunks that increases the overall performance by narrowing the search space for the store or retrieves operation which is accessed via logical abstraction layer that adds metadata.
C
CAP Theorem
It is a distributed system that can offer only two out of the three top benefits that are - availability, consistency and partition tolerance.
Cloud Application
A cloud application is a kind of application that runs on the cloud.
Cloud Computing
Cloud computing provides access to applications and data from any location and any device worldwide with an internet connection. It offers businesses with scalable computing resources by saving them for acquiring and maintaining.
Centralized Logging Solution
Centralized logging solution can enable programmers and admins for viewing, comparing and correlating logs easily from diverse servers at the same place.
Cloud Architecture
Components that are needed for cloud computing include a front-end and back-end platform, a network and a cloud-based delivery.
Circuit Breaker
It has a cloud-native design pattern for building and operating scalable and resilient microservices.
Cloud Broker
Cloud broker abstracts away from the details provided to provide users easy access for cloud computing resources that will provide simplified API or Human UI, data lifecycle management and focused service integrations and aggregations.
Cloud Migration
It is a process of moving apps and data from an onsite computer to the cloud. Also, it includes moving data from one cloud environment to the other one.
Cloud-Native Application
Cloud-native application takes advantage of the cloud environment i.e. high availability and scalability.
Cloud-Native Middleware
Cloud-native middleware framework or product leverages the cloud-native design patterns, concepts and cloud platforms.
Co-Location
Co-location is a data centre that offers rental space, network connections, cooling, power and security for servers for managing and maintaining.
Container
It is a kind of resource isolation at the OS level in the user space. Isolated elements vary by containerization strategy and include disk quota, file system, CPU and memory, I/O rate, network access and root privileges. More Lightweight than machine level virtualization and sufficient for isolation requirement sets.
Container Image
A container image acts as a snapshot of a container. They are created using a build optimized per user, can decrease transport time and network load, simplify per-machine resource management and prevent DoS by distributing requests.
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Physically distributed servers that offer content along paths optimized per user can decrease the transport time and network load, simplify per-machine resource management and can prevent DoS by distributing requests.
Cloud Foundry
It is an open-source cloud platform as a service that was developed as a joint venture between EMC, VMware, General Electric and currently is owned by Pivotel Software.
Cloud Backup
It is the process of backing up data to a cloud-based and remote server.
Cloud Marketplace
It is an online marketplace which is operated by a CSP (Cloud Service Provider) where customer browses and subscribe to software applications and developer services which are built on and integrated with supplement the CSP’s main offering.
Cloud Washing
Cloud washing is a marketing technique that is used for rebranding old products by connecting them to the cloud.
Cloud Service Provider
CSP is a company that provides cloud computing services like IaaS, PaaS and SaaS to individuals and different businesses.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
It is an application that allows businesses to manage their relationships with current and future customers by providing the business with different tools to manage customer service, sales, and technical support roles.
Cloud Engineer
There is a lot of demand for Cloud Engineers in the market as it is an IT professional who is responsible for performing any duties which are related to cloud computing that includes planning, designing, management and maintenance.
Cloud Browser
The cloud browser is located in a cloud platform’s data centre and acts as a proxy between the targeted web server and the user. The end-user requests a page from the target server and processes the response. The traffic which is getting back to the end-user is a real-time streamed image of the requested page.
Cloud Cartography
The goal of cloud cartography is to map the infrastructure of the vendor and find out where the specific virtual machine is located.
Cloud Governance
Cloud governance refers to the process of managing and applying some principles or policies on cloud computing for ensuring they have maintained the requisite security standards. The goal of cloud governance and compliance is to protect the user’s interests and make sure cloud services are distributed, manage and delivered in the best manner.
Cloud IDE
Cloud IDE provides real-time collaboration between dev teams for working in a unified development environment that will reduce incompatibilities and will enhance productivity.
Cloud Integration
It is a system of technologies and tools that connected diverse applications, systems, and IT environments for the real-time exchange of data and processes. After getting coupled, the integrated cloud services and data can be accessed and viewed and analyzed with data from on-premise applications.
Cloud Insurance
Cloud insurance is a kind of risk management approach that that will involve a promise of financial remuneration in the event of failures or even downtime on the part of the cloud computing service provider. It is typically included in the service-level agreement.
Cloud Economics
It is a branch of knowledge that includes principles, costs and benefits of cloud computing. This permits organizations to save money and re-invest it for innovation or expansion.
Cloud Load Balancing
Cloud load balancing is a process of distributing computing resources and workloads across different application servers that are running on the cloud environment. Cloud load balancing will allow to increase the application performance and reliability without much loss of service and lower cost.
Cloud Manageability
Cloud manageability is the control limit that a user has over the cloud resources. It refers to the ability of the user for controlling the performance and amount of resources that are being consumed on the cloud computing processes.
Cloud Management Platform (CMP)
Cloud management platform is an integrated product that allows different users to manage their public, private and hybrid cloud environments. CMPs incorporate self-service interfaces, enabling billing and metering, provision system images and offers some level of workload optimization using established policies. A cloud management platform can assist an enterprise to adjust in a complex cloud-centred IT strategy.
Cloudlet
Cloudlet is an architectural element that has been arisen from the convergence of IoT, cloud computing and mobile computing. It offers a way for moving cloud computing capacity closer to different intelligent devices at the edge of the network just by acting as a middle tier of a three-tier hierarchy which is an intelligent device or cloud or a cloudlet.
Cloud Portability
Cloud portability can migrate applications and data between diverse cloud environments without disrupting the standard processes and operations. Cloud portability offers cloud-to-cloud migration.
Cloud Provisioning
Cloud provisioning refers to the deployment and integration of an organization’s cloud computing services in that infrastructure. The cloud services can be hybrid, private or public solutions.
Cloud Pyramid
It refers to the overall systematic set of interdependent layers that will collectively make up to the cloud environment. Usually, the underlying layers provide support to the overlying layers.
Cloud Standards
Cloud standards are an acceptable technological and service level of quality that applies to diverse cloud services providers as per their resources and service delivery. It is regulated by the (ISA) International Organization of Standardization.
Cloud Sourcing
Cloud sourcing is the process of outsourcing socialized cloud services, resources and products to third parties for deployment, provision and maintenance of individual services. Service providers engage in this using some cloud sourcing services to other service providers.
Cloud Security Alliance (CSA)
Cloud security alliance is a non-profit organization which is dedicated to raising awareness of the best practices for securing cloud computing environments.
D
Data Centre
Data centre refers to the virtual and physical infrastructure which is used by an enterprise for housing and maintaining back-end information technology infrastructure like networking systems and servers for storing, managing dissemination of the data and information about the particular enterprise.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
DLP refers to a variety of tools designed for ensuring critical corporate data is only accessible by the authorized users and there are safeguards to protect data leak. DLP apps utilize business rules for protecting and classifying important and confidential information so that the end-users can not maliciously share that critical information.
Data Migration
Data migration is the process of moving data between storage systems, servers or formats or data centres. It is done for replacing or upgrading servers or storage equipment, conduct server maintenance, or relocate a data centre.
Database
A well-organized collection of data is called a database.
DevOps
DevOps is an amalgamation of development and operations which has the combination of tasks that are being performed by the application development and system operation team of an organization.
Data Volume
Data volume is a directory inside of a container that is present to hold persistent and commonly shared data.
Distributed System
A distributed system has a huge number of computer systems linked by a network.
Docker
Docker is an open-source platform for deploying and managing virtualized containers.
Dockerfile
A file that has one or more instructions that show how a container is being created.
Dynamic or Agile Environment
A kind of environment where servers are scaled-up and scaled down very often.
Data Breach
Data breaches involve personally identifiable information or personal health information, or intellectual property or trade secrets.
Data Classification
Data classification is a diverse process of categorizing or sorting data into different forms, types and any other distinct class or based on diverse criteria or methods. The whole is particularly very important when it is all about data security, risk management and compliance.
Data Controller
A company, person or a body that finds out the purposes for which and in which manner any personal data is processed. A data controller works in their autonomy, processing collected data with its processes. Also, the data controller is responsible for ensuring that the personal data should fall under their complies and regulations.
Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)
It is the area of security that deals with the protection of an organization from major disaster effects that destroys part of its resources including data records, organization’s physical place and IT equipment. It is a data recovery plan that maps the quickest and most effective way through which the whole work can be resumed after a disaster.
Desktop-as-a-Service
DaaS is a cloud computing service in which the back-end of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is outsourced and managed by a third party CSP.
Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)
It is a method for identifying and minimizing the potential privacy risk that an organization has. When you are performing a DPIA for all your high-risk data processing activities then it is a sure-fire way of demonstrating to authorities that your organization will comply with the GDPR.
Data Steward
A data steward is responsible for managing and overseeing the data assets of an organization for helping and providing enterprise users with high-quality data which is easily accessible, consistent and proficient.
Data Subject
An individual who can be directly or indirectly identified with an identifier like a name, ID number, location data or specific factors to the individual’s physiological, genetic, mental, social or cultural identity. Under the GDPR rule, the data subject has the full right to access their data and can inquire whether the data is being processed or not. The data subject has full right to not to be evaluated based on automated processing.
Data Portability
The fundamental right of the data subject from one controller to another i.e varying computing environments, cloud services and application programs. Data portability permits individuals end-users or businesses to seamlessly migrating, interlinking and integrating data sets in the disparate systems.
Data integrity
Data integrity refers to the overall accuracy, completeness and consistency of the data. also, it refers to the safety of data in regards to regulatory compliance. Data integrity is imposed at the database design phase with the use of standard rules, and procedures.
Decision Support System
A computerized app is used to support courses of action that can be taken in a business or organization. A well-built DSS assists decision-makers compile a set of data from different sources, documents, business models, raw data and personal knowledge from employees.
DNS Manager
DNS manager is an application that controls Domain Name System (DNS) records and server clusters that enable domain name owners for controlling them easily. DNS management software greatly decreases human error when editing repetitive and complex DNS data. With the use of DNS management, one website can command the services of multiple servers.
Disruptive Technology
A business that describes the innovations that enhances products or services in unexpected ways. All these innovations change the methods which are used for accomplishing any task and re-shaping the whole market for that particular task. Although cloud computing is considered as a disruptive technology because it has flexible pricing models, elasticity, and low maintenance cost as compared to the traditional IT service provisioning.
E
Elasticity
Elasticity is used for referencing the ability of a system to adapt and to change workload demand by provisioning and deprovisioning pooled resources so that provisioned resources should match the current demand as well as possibilities.
Enterprise Application
An enterprise application is a kind of application or software that is intended for large scale use by a large business.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
ERP software allows businesses or organizations to manage a variety of integrated applications that are used for collecting, managing and storing data on diverse business activities.
Extensibility
Extensibility can be defined as the ability of a cloud solution for adding a new runtime and framework support using community build packs.
Elastic Ephemeral Computing
Ephemeral storage and computing using instance store volumes which are available on EC2.
Event-Driven Architecture
It is a pattern promoting the production and consumption of events that are used for integrating different parts of a system.
Encryption
It is the conversion of data into cipher text that can only be read after it has been decrypted via a special key or password. Encryption is the most secure way of protecting information assets.
Enterprise-grade
Enterprise-grade is a term that is used for describing products that can easily be integrated into enterprise infrastructure with less complexity and offers transparent proxy support.
Enterprise mobility
Enterprise mobility is a phrase that is used for describing the growing trend towards a shift in the work habits with employees that are opting to work out of the office with the use of mobile devices and cloud devices for remotely performing business tasks.
Enterprise file sharing and synchronization (EFSS)
EFSS refers to cloud-based capabilities that permit enterprise employees for sharing and synchronizing files, photos, videos and documents that needed to be stored in an approved repository then accessed remotely from various devices like tablets, smartphones and PCs.
Enterprise mobility management (EMM)
EMM is an approach that encompasses the set of policies, technologies and policies which are used for maintaining and managing the use of mobile devices in an enterprise. Enterprise mobility management can help employees to enhance mobile productivity by equipping them using all the tools which are needed to remotely perform work-related tasks.
Enterprise social software (ESS)
It is a general term that is used for referring the social networking and collaboration tools utilized in an enterprise setting. The goal of enterprise social software is to boost productivity by enhancing communication, saving time and promoting collaboration. Some of the common ESS platforms are Salesforce’s Chatter and Microsoft’s Yammer.
Enterprise storage
Enterprise storage refers to the public storage that has been designed for helping large organizations to save and retrieve digital information. Enterprise storage is scalable to serve a huge user base and heavy workloads without slowing down the whole system.
External cloud
External clouds are the public and private cloud services that are provided by the third party outside the organization.
Elastic computing
Elastic computing can dynamically provision and deprovision computing and storage resources for stretching to the demands of peak usage without the tension about capacity planning and engineering around uneven usage patterns.
F
Federated Database
Federated database is a system under which multiple databases seems to function as a single entity. The databases involved in this type of system exists independently of the others. After the diverse databases are combined and one federated database is formed.
Functions-as-a-Service (FaaS)
Cloud services that enable app serverless app management and development. The common FaaS providers include AWS Lamba, Azure Functions, and Google Cloud Functions.
Fault tolerance
Fault tolerance refers to the ability of a computer system or component for continuing the working without the loss of service in the event of an unexpected error of problem. Fault tolerance can be achieved with embedded hardware or a software or a combination of both.
Federated database
Federated database is a system in which various databases seem to function as one entity and each component database in the system exists independently of the others and is functional and self-sustained. A federated database is a perfect solution for database search issues.
File server
The file server is the computer exclusively responsible for the central storage and management of files generation or required by other computers without doing physical transfer files with the use of external storage like flash disks.
G
Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
It is a comprehensive cloud platform that is offered by Google and it consists of both infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) offerings.
Green Cloud
Green cloud is a buzz phrase that is used for referring to the potential environmental benefits that cloud technology can offer to society.
Grid computing
Grid computing is a distributed architecture of various computers that are connected to solve a complex problem.
Google App Engine
Google app engine is a service that enables developers for creating and running web applications on Google’s infrastructure and share their apps using a pay-as-you-go or a consumption-based plan with no setup costs and recurring fees.
Google Apps
Google’s Software as a Service (SaaS) product covers an office productivity suite, calendar, email, and file storage and sharing. Google Apps for business covers an enterprise administration interface and archiving tools and support for legal holds document discovery compliance. Google Apps for education covers additional collaboration and reporting tools for classroom environments.
H
Host Machine
The host machine is a piece of physical hardware that is used for hosting virtual machines.
Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid cloud is a kind of cloud computing environment that is comprised of a mixture of public cloud, private cloud and on-premises solutions. In hybrid clouds, the private and public cloud infrastructure remain isolated from one another but are bound together by the essence of technology that allows data and services portability in between them.
Hypervisor
The hypervisor or virtual machine monitor is a piece of software that allows physical devices for sharing their resources among virtual machines that are running on top of the physical hardware.
Host-based Intrusion Detection System (HIDS)
HIDS is a software application that is used for monitoring and analyzing a computer system for any unauthorized activity.
Hardware as a Service (HaaS)
HaaS refers to the provision of hardware resources that are managed and distributed by third-party service providers using a network connection.
High Availability (HA)
High availability refers to the provision of hardware resources that are continuously operational without any kind of failure for a long time. The term implies that there are safeguards in the place in the case of component failures which are typically in the form of redundant components.
Hosted Application
A hosted application is a distributed program like the Software as a Service that allows users to remotely operate and execute tasks. Usually, it is hosted by physical servers that are managed by cloud service providers.
I
Infrastructure
Information technology infrastructure is a combination of hardware and virtual resources that supports the overall IT environment.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
IaaS is a model of cloud computing under which the vendor hosts virtualized computing resources and network and storage resources for providing them to the user as a service using the Internet.
Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
Integrated Development Environment is an app that offers a programming environment for developers. IDE includes a code editor and automation tools and a debugger.
Internal cloud
An internal cloud is a cloud environment that is entirely hosted by infrastructure and dedicated resources of an organization. It contains all the cloud components such as shared virtualized resources and is managed by the organization.
Internet of Things
IoT refers to an evolving network of physical objects that provides unique identifiers and can transfer data on the network without any human interference. Internet of Things extends beyond smartphones, computers, and tablets to a different range of devices that uses technology for interacting and communicating with the environment in an intelligent fashion using the internet.
International Traffic In Arms Regulation (ITAR)
The united state’s regulation controls the import and export of defense-related services and articles on the USML (United States Munitions List) and is administrated by the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC). As per the US government, all the exporters, manufacturers of defense services and brokers or any other which is related to technical data have to be ITAR compliant. For preventing the disclosure of transfer of sensitive data to a foreign national, ITAR mandates access to technical data or physical materials that are related to military and defense technologies that are restricted to US citizens only.
L
Linux
It is an open-source operating system that is built on Unix and is used for the majority of cloud services.
Load Balancing
Load balancing is the process of distributing computing workloads across several resources like servers. Under cloud computing, the load balancer behaves as a reverse proxy and distributes application traffic for multiple servers for preventing any single application server from becoming a point of failure.
Lambda (serverless architecture)
AWS cloud service that enables the building of web apps and mobile backends in a faster and more agile way.
Lift and Shift
Common cloud migration option that will replicate in-house apps in the cloud without re-design.
M
Managed Service Provider (MSP)
An MSP is an IT service provider that offers a fully outsourced network, application, and system services across the network for clients.
Microservices
Microservices architecture is a way of designing applications in which complex applications are built out of a suite of small, independently deployable services. The microservices run their processes and communicates with one another with the use of a lightweight mechanism like language-agnostic APIs. Microservices are independently deployable and scalable and are written in different languages.
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure is known as Windows Azure, a cloud computing platform. Azure was launched as a Pass solution but provides both IaaS and PasS services.
Middleware
It is a software that connects software components or enterprise applications.
Multi-Cloud
A multi-cloud strategy is the concurrent utilization of separate cloud service providers for diverse infrastructure, software, and platforms needs. A multi-cloud approach helps to prevent vendor lock-in and helps an enterprise deal with different workloads and partners. The multi-cloud approach complicates many processes like security, and governance and cloud management platform is recommended for this approach.
Multi-Tenancy
It is a mode of operation for software under which various instances of one and many apps run in a shared environment. In a cloud computing model, pooled physical and virtual resources are dynamically assigned and reassigned for tenants as per the consumer demand.
Managed DNS
Managed DNS is an eternal service provider that runs authoritative DNS servers on your behalf, answering queries about your domain names.
Mesosphere
Mesosphere is a commercial container cluster management platform which is based on Apache Mesos.
Metered Licensing
Metered Licensing is the per-user licensing flexibility in the cloud.
Microservices Architecture
Microservices architecture describes the app which is built as a collection of single-process services communicating over constrained and easily managed channels HTTP where every service does one well-defined business level task or collection of tasks and scales independently of other services. Microservice component boundaries map bounded contexts in Domain-Driven Design. The aim was to make changes deployment faster, easier and technology, business match tighter, infrastructure more automated and conceptual and data models more flexible and applications more resilient for failure.
Multi-tenancy
Multi-tenancy is a computing architecture where various instances operate in a shared environment. A tenant gives the ability for customizing different parts of the app like business rules or user interface but they do not have access to apps base code.
Microsoft Office 365
Microsoft’s software includes services models that provide Microsoft Office on a subscription-based pricing model with the use of cloud storage abilities. For business and enterprise use, Office 365 covers email and SNS with cloud-hosted instances of Exchange Server and Skype for Business and others.
O
Orchestration
Orchestration is the process of managing how containers are built and how they are connected.
Origin Server
An application server is a server that serves the content to a CDN when the object is no longer cached or has expired.
On-demand Computing (ODC)
On-demand computing is a computing model where computing resources such as software and storage are available in real-time as required. ODC enables users to provision raw cloud resources at the run time which is where and when required.
OpenStack
OpenStack is a free and open-source Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) initiative for creating and managing large pools of storing and processing and networking resources in a data centre.
On-demand Service
On-demand service is a model by which a customer can purchase cloud services as required for instances if customers required to utilize additional servers for the duration of a project they can do and then drop back to the previous level after the project gets completed.
P
Personal Cloud
Personal cloud is a marketing term which is often used for describing network that is attached to the storage devices.
Platform
It is a computer system on which applications run or a base of technologies on which other technologies are built on.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
It is a model of cloud computing in which the vendor offers the hardware and software tools that are necessary for creating, deploying, and managing applications at scale to the user using the Internet as a service.
Private Cloud
It is a kind of cloud infrastructure that is provisioned for use by a single organization that is comprised of various users. A private cloud cab is managed and operated by the organization, or a third party or combination of them and it is available on or off-premises.
Public Cloud
It is a cloud infrastructure which is hosted by the cloud services provider and is available to the public using the Internet.
Private Container Registry
It is a private and secure location for publishing, storing ad retrieving container images for software that you are using in your infrastructure.
Protocol Buffers
Google’s language-neutral, extensible mechanism for serializing structured data, platform-neutral, similar to a smaller, simpler and faster XML.
Personal Data
Any kind of information which has a relation to an identifiable or identified individual who can be identified directly or indirectly based on their data. Personal data that has been encrypted or de-identified or pseudonymized but can be used for re-identifying an individual remains personal data and falls in the scope of GDPR.
Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
Any kind of data when utilized alone or with the essence of relevant data has the potential to identify the particular person. Not every PII is equal in terms of sensitivity and importance. For example, if your social security number is unique for you and crucial to your identity. While your name falls under the PII, it is not as sensitive as your social security number. The sensitive PII has to be encrypted when the data is at rest or in transit.
Predictive Analytics
It is a branch of advanced analytics that is used for making predictions about future events using various techniques from statistics, modelling, machine learning, data mining and artificial intelligence. It has been emerged from a need to converting the raw data into informative insights that can be used for understanding past trends and patterns and can provide a model for accurately forecasting future outcomes. It can predict what might occur in the future with a strong level of reliability that includes risk assessment and what-if scenarios.
Prescriptive Analytics
The utilization of technology for helping organizations make informed decisions using the analysis of raw data. Prescriptive analytics tries to quantify the effect of future decisions to advise on possible outcomes before any decisions are made.
Pay as you go
Pay as you go is a cost model defined for cloud services that encompass both subscription-based and consumption-based models in contrast to the traditional IT cost model that needs up-front capital expenditure for hardware and software.
R
Resource
A resource is a kind of component in the computer system which is available for a limited time.
S
Scalability
The ability of a process, framework or system to handle a growing workload. In other words, we can say, a scalable system is adaptable for increasing demands. It can scale on demand is one of the biggest advantages of cloud computing.
Service Level Agreement (SLA)
SLA is a contractual agreement between a customer and a cloud service provider (CSP) that defines the service level, availability and the performance guaranteed by the CSP.
Shared Resources
Shared resources are also popular by the name of network resources which are computing resources that can be accessed remotely by the network like Local Area Network (LAN) or the Internet.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
SaaS is a model of cloud computing under which applications or software are hosted by a vendor and provided to the user as a service. Software as a Service (SaaS) applications are licensed on a subscription basis and are available for uses over a network i.e. the Internet. The best example of SaaS application is Microsoft’s Office 365 that provides Microsoft’s famous suite of productivity software among which MS Word and MS Excel are the most popular services.
Software Development Kit (SDK)
SDK is also known by the name of the developer’s toolkit or devout which is a set of development tools that allows the creation of applications for a certain platform. Typically, SDK includes sample code, APIs, debuggers, documentation and other utilities.
Software Stack
A software stack is a collection of applications that work in a particular and defined order for achieving a common goal.
Scalability
Scalability can be defined as the ability for the cloud to continue functioning-well when the use and storage have grown.
Scale Elastically
It has the potential to deliver capacity on demand and then removes it when no longer needed.
Semantic Versioning
Semantic versioning is a governance scheme for how to structure a version number and when to adjust it.
Serverless
It is a platform that is required for providing computing, networking and storing without the requirement of managing virtual machines.
Service Discovery
Service discovery is a cloud-native design pattern for discovering distributed microservices in a flexible architecture.
Shadow IT
Software or hardware in an enterprise is used and managed without the knowledge of the organization’s central IT department. Shadow IT is propagated by the rapid adoption of consumer-based cloud services. It can introduce security risks as the hardware and software are not subject to the same stringent security measures are supported technologies.
Salesforce
Salesforce is an online SaaS company that is best known for delivering customer relationship management (CRM) software to companies on the Internet.
Service Provider
The company or organization that serves a public or private cloud service.
Social Networking Service (SNS)
Social networking service is utilized in the enterprises for collaborating, file sharing and knowledge transferring among the most popular platforms like Microsoft’s Yammer and Salesforce’s Chatter. It is often called as enterprise social software for differentiating in between traditional SNS platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook.
Software plus services
Software plus services is a combination of cloud-hosted services with locally running software. This method is allowed for utilizing the local system to process power while depending on the cloud operations for software license verification, syncing between devices, portable identities and file storage.
Subscription-based pricing model
It is a kind of pricing model that allows customers to pay fees for using the services for a particular time often used for SaaS services.
T
Testing as a Service
Testing as a Service is an outsourcing model where testing activities associated with some of the enterprise’s business activities that are outsourced to a third party that specializes in simulating real-world testing environments as per the clients’ requirements. The most important benefit of TaaS is that it is a highly scalable model.
U
User Interface (UI)
It is the way through which the user and the computer system interacts.
User Experience (UX)
User experience is the nature of the user’s interaction with and the perception of the system.
User Space
The memory area of any operating system where application software gets executed is called as the user space.
Utility computing
Utility computing is a service distribution model where the CSP offers the resources for users and fails to charge flat rate subscriptions but rather on the use of individual resources. This model is designed for mining the cost of resources for maximizing their efficient use.
V
Vendor Lock-in
It is when a customer finds out themselves locked-in or is tuck with a particular cloud service provider (CSP). Vendor lock-in is determined by difficulty in moving from one cloud vendor to another one usually because of the lack of the standardized protocols, data structure, APIs and service models.
Vertical Cloud
Vertical cloud is a type of cloud computing solution which is built or optimized for a particular business vertical like manufacturing healthcare and financial services.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
VDI is a desktop operating system that is hosted in a virtual machine.
Virtual Machine (VM)
A virtual machine is a software computer that runs an application environment or an operating system just like the physical hardware would. The end users get the same experience on a virtual machine as they get on the dedicated hardware.
Vendor Neutral
Vendor-neutral is used for describing a state in which the definition and distribution or revision of any specification is not controlled by a single vendor. The specifications of vendor neutral encourage the creation of broadly compatible and interchangeable technologies and products. Its neutrality makes it possible through the standardization, non-proprietary design principles and unbiased business practices.
Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
VPC is a cloud model where the service provider isolates different cloud components and form individual private cloud environments. It is a public cloud environment that has been configured for supporting and hosting a private cloud environment. The best example of Virtual Private Cloud is Amazon Virtual Private Cloud.
Virtualization
Virtualization is used for creating a virtual version of a device or resource just like an operating system, storage device or a network. Virtualization is making its head road in big areas of IT i.e. storage virtualization and server virtualization. The best advantage of virtualization is that it allows the management of workloads by significantly transforming traditional computing for making it more scalable. Virtualization allows CSPs for providing server resources as a utility rather than a single product.
W
Web API
Web API is an HTTP endpoint that is designed for accepting and returning data rather than the HTML.
Web Socket
Web socket is a computer protocol that provides full-duplex communication channels on a single TCP connection.
X
XaaS
Anything as a service is a collective term that is used for delivering services over the internet using cloud computing as opposed to providing locally or on-premises under an enterprise. The main objective behind XaaS and other cloud services is that organizations can help in minimizing the costs and obtain a particular type of personal resources by buying services from vendors on a subscription model.