IT Management

Compliance, risk and governance

This glossary contains definitions related to compliance. Some definitions explain the meaning of words used in compliance regulations. Other definitions are related to the strategies that compliance officers use to mitigate risk and create a manageable compliance infrastructure.

• think tank

  A think tank is an organization that gathers a group of interdisciplinary scholars to perform research around particular policies, issues or ideas.

• duopoly

  A duopoly is a scenario in which two companies dominate the market for a product or service.

• market concentration

  Market concentration is the distribution of a given market among the participating companies.

CRM

The goal of customer experience management (CEM) is to optimize customer satisfaction at each touchpoint of the customer journey. This involves creating customer-centric strategies to improve reach, engagement and retention. Definitions in this glossary include terms about marketing and creating a brand personality, the use of AI and RPA in martech, capturing and analyzing customer feedback and contact center automation.

• marketing-qualified lead (MQL)

  A marketing-qualified lead (MQL) is a website visitor whose engagement levels indicate that he is likely to become a customer. 

• growth hacking

  Growth hacking is an approach to driving product adoption, usage and sales by experimental, innovative and low-cost means.

• sales automation tools

  Sales automation tools relieve sales agents of tasks that take them away from interacting with current and potential customers.

ERP

Terms related to business, including definitions about project management and words and phrases about human resources, finance and vertical industries.

• marketing-qualified lead (MQL)

  A marketing-qualified lead (MQL) is a website visitor whose engagement levels indicate that he is likely to become a customer. 

• maturity grid (maturity model)

  A maturity grid is an assessment tool for evaluating an organization's level of progress towards a goal.

• voice of the customer (VOC)

  Voice of the customer (VOC) is the component of customer experience (CX) and customer satisfaction (CSAT) that focuses on the perception of a customer's needs, wants, expectations and preferences.

Government IT

Terms related to government IT, including definitions about specific federal, state and local government programs as well as words and phrases about policy and compliance.

• think tank

  A think tank is an organization that gathers a group of interdisciplinary scholars to perform research around particular policies, issues or ideas.

• U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)

  U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is a United States federal government agency tasked with the enforcing of justice and law.

• Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI)

  Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) is the proposed Department of Defense (DoD) cloud infrastructure network.

Healthcare IT

Terms related to healthcare IT, including definitions about healthcare information and management systems and words and phrases about electronic health records, meaningful use, government regulations and medical technology.

• motion analysis

  Motion analysis is a measuring technique used in computer vision, image processing and high-speed photography applications to detect movement.

• polygenic risk score

  A polygenic risk score is an expression of someone’s likelihood of having or developing a particular medical condition.

• remote patient monitoring (RPM)

  Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is a subcategory of homecare telehealth that allows patients to use mobile medical devices or technology to gather patient-generated health data (PGHD) and send it to healthcare professionals.

HR management

• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

  Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a charted set of human requirements that are important for an individual to achieve complete development and self-actualization.

• intranet

  An intranet is a private network that is contained within an enterprise. It may consist of many interlinked local area networks and also use leased lines in the wide area network. Typically, an intranet includes connections through one or more gateway computers to the outside Internet. The main purpose of an intranet is to share company information and computing resources among employees. An intranet can also be used to facilitate working in groups and for teleconferences.

• Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI)

  HRCI (Human Resource Certification Institute) is a U.S. based credentialing organization offering certifications to HR generalists, administrators and managers. The certifications are awarded upon successful completion of competency exams that cover Human Resource Management (HRM) practices, policies and principles.

IT procurement

Terms related to the activities and procedures necessary to acquire information technology (IT) products and services.

• platform economy

  Platform economy is the tendency for commerce to increasingly move towards and favor digital platform business models.

• feedback loop

  A feedback loop is a system where some portion or all of the output produced by the system returns as input, effecting the succeeding processes of that system in some way.

• service level indicator

  A service level indicator (SLI) is a carefully defined measure of performance within a provided service that is given to a customer by the vendor.

Network management

Terms related to managing computer networks, including definitions about LANS or WANS and words and phrases about network design, troubleshooting, security and backups.

• Group Policy

  Group Policy is a hierarchical infrastructure that allows a network administrator in charge of Microsoft's Active Directory to implement specific configurations for users and computers. Group policy is primarily a security tool, and can be used to apply security settings to users and computers.

• computer network

  A a computer network, also referred to as a data network, is a series of points or nodes interconnected by communication paths for transmitting, receiving and exchanging data, voice and video traffic.

• intent-based networking (IBN)

  Intent-based networking (IBN) is a form of network administration that incorporates artificial intelligence (AI), network orchestration and machine learning (ML) to automate administrative tasks across a network.

Project management

Terms related to project management, including definitions about project management methodologies and tools.

• think tank

  A think tank is an organization that gathers a group of interdisciplinary scholars to perform research around particular policies, issues or ideas.

• gig economy

  A gig economy is a free market system in which temporary positions are common and organizations contract with independent workers for short-term engagements.

• unknown known

  An unknown known is information that an individual or organization has in its possession but whose existence, relevance or value has not been realized.

Security management

Terms related to security management, including definitions about intrusion detection systems (IDS) and words and phrases about asset management, security policies, security monitoring, authorization and authentication.

• network scanning

  Network scanning is a procedure for identifying active devices on a network by employing a feature or features in the network protocol to signal devices and await a response.

• threat ignorance

  Threat ignorance is a concept used by security professionals to determine the level of vulnerability a company or user’s computer or system has to an attack.

• Transport Layer Security (TLS)

  Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a protocol that provides authentication, privacy, and data integrity between two communicating computer applications.

SEO

Definitions related to search engine optimization, including definitions about SEO and words and phrases about bots, spiders, organic traffic and all areas of search engine marketing (SEM).

• microdata

  Microdata is a type of specification language that is embedded within HTML content to improve machine readability, annotate elements and analyze web pages.

• Click to Tweet

  Click to Tweet is a website that automatically generates links for users to share content through their own Twitter accounts.

• Google My Business

  Google My Business is a free online business listing service that is integrated with the Google search engine.

Software asset management

Terms related to software management, including definitions about licensing and words and phrases about software lifecycle management and software asset management.

• open core model (open core software)

  The open core model is a business strategy where a company offers a “core” version of a product with limited features as free and open source (FOSS) software at the same time an add-on commercial version is released as proprietary software.

• event

  An event, in a computing context, is an action or occurrence that can be identified by a program and has significance for system hardware or software.

• Software as a Service (SaaS)

  Software as a service (SaaS) is a software distribution model in which a third-party provider hosts applications and makes them available to customers over the Internet.

Storage management

Terms related to data storage management, including definitions about enterprise storage and words and phrases about storage infrastructure, storage capacity and hierarchical storage management (HSM).

• Storage vMotion

  Storage vMotion is a component of VMware vSphere that allows the live migration of a running virtual machine's (VM) file system from one storage system to another, with no downtime for the VM or service disruption for end users.

• persistent storage

  Persistent storage is any data storage device that retains data after power to that device is shut off. It is also sometimes referred to as non-volatile storage.

• data lake

  A data lake is a storage repository that holds a vast amount of raw data in its native format until it is needed.