IT Management

Career paths and IT certifications

• data scientist

  A data scientist is a professional responsible for collecting, analyzing and interpreting extremely large amounts of data. The data scientist role is an offshoot of several traditional technical roles, including mathematician, scientist, statistician and computer professional.

• release train engineer (RTE)

  A release train engineer (RTE) is a servant leader who facilitates program level processes and execution, drives continuous development, manages risks and escalates impediments while also acting as a full time chief scrum master for a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).

• Chief Transformation Officer (CTO)

  Chief transformation officer is an executive role, often in the C-suite, that focuses on bringing about change as well as growth in revenue and profit to an organization.

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.

• cybersecurity

  Cybersecurity is the protection of internet-connected systems -- including hardware, software and data -- from cyberattacks.

• Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA)

  Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) is a certification issued by ISACA to people in charge of ensuring that an organization's IT and business systems are monitored, managed and protected; the certification is presented after completion of a comprehensive testing and application process.

• IBM OpenPages

  IBM OpenPages is a governance, risk and compliance (GRC) platform that centralizes services and components associated with the challenges and management of regulatory initiatives.

CRM

The goal of customer experience management (CEM) is to optimize customer satisfaction at each touchpoint of the customer journey. Definitions in this glossary include terms about marketing and creating a customer-centric view of business, the use of AI and RPA in martech, capturing and analyzing customer feedback and contact center automation.

• market segmentation

  Market segmentation is a marketing strategy that uses well-defined criteria to divide a brand's total addressable market share into smaller groups.

• Adobe Experience Platform

  Adobe Experience Platform, formally known as Adobe Cloud Platform, is a suite of customer experience management (CEM) services and tools.

• headless commerce (headless e-commerce)

  Headless commerce, also called headless e-commerce, is a platform architecture that decouples the front end of an e-commerce website with the back end.

ERP

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

• workflow automation

  Workflow automation is an approach to making the flow of tasks, documents and information across work-related activities perform independently in accordance with defined business rules.

• strategic sourcing

  Strategic sourcing is an approach to supply chain management that formalizes the way information is gathered and used so that an organization can leverage its consolidated purchasing power to find the best possible values in the marketplace.

• e-business (electronic business)

  E-business (electronic business) is the conduct of business processes on the internet.

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.

• cybersecurity

  Cybersecurity is the protection of internet-connected systems -- including hardware, software and data -- from cyberattacks.

• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

  The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is an independent agency of the United States (U.S.) federal government that preserves public confidence in the banking system by insuring deposits... (Continued)

• cyberwarfare

  Cyberwarfare is computer- or network-based conflict involving politically motivated attacks by a nation-state on another nation-state.

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.

• cybersecurity

  Cybersecurity is the protection of internet-connected systems -- including hardware, software and data -- from cyberattacks.

• medical practice management (MPM) software

  Medical practice management (MPM) software is a collection of computerized services used by healthcare professionals and administration to streamline day-to-day tasks within a medical practice and improve the efficiency of operations and quality of patient care.

• Chief Health Informatics Officer (CHIO)

  The Chief Health Informatics Officer (CHIO) is a strategic, executive-level position responsible for developing, managing and applying health IT, health informatics and information management strategies.

HR management

• social learning theory

  The social learning theory is the philosophy that people can learn from each other through observation, imitation and modeling.

• people analytics (HR analytics)

  People analytics, also known as human resource (HR) analytics and talent analytics, is a form of big data that applies math, statistics and modeling to worker-related data to see and predict patterns.

• off-hours communications

  Off-hours communications are work-related emails, texts, phone calls, social media messaging and other communications that are transmitted when an employee is not officially working.

IT procurement

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

• digital ecosystem

  A digital ecosystem is a group of interconnected information technology resources that can function as a unit. In order for an ecosystem to operate efficiently, all components must be compatible.

• strategic sourcing

  Strategic sourcing is an approach to supply chain management that formalizes the way information is gathered and used so that an organization can leverage its consolidated purchasing power to find the best possible values in the marketplace.

• SIPOC diagram (suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, customers)

  A SIPOC (suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, customers) diagram is a visual tool for documenting a business process from beginning to end prior to implementation.

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.

• configuration management (CM)

  Configuration management (CM) is a governance and systems engineering process for ensuring consistency in an operational environment.

• Nginx

  Nginx (pronounced engine x) is open source webserver software that also performs reverse proxy, load balancing, email proxy and HTTP cache services.

• private certificate authority (CA)

  Private CA stands for private certificate authority and is an enterprise specific certificate authority that functions like a publicly trusted CA but is exclusively run by or for the enterprise.

Project management

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

• market validation

  Market validation is a series of actions that an entrepreneur carries out early in the product development lifecycle to verify there is a need for the new product or service in question.

• software requirements specification (SRS)

  A software requirements specification (SRS) is a comprehensive description of the intended purpose and environment for software under development. The SRS fully describes what the software will do and how it will be expected to perform... (Continued)

• collaboration diagram

  A collaboration diagram, also known as a communication diagram, is an illustration of the relationships and interactions among software objects in the Unified Modeling Language (UML).

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.

• firewall

  A firewall is software or firmware that enforces a set of rules about what data packets will be allowed to enter or leave a computer network.

• encryption

  Encryption is the method by which information is converted into secret code that hides the information's true meaning. The science of encrypting and decrypting information is called cryptography.

• cybersecurity

  Cybersecurity is the protection of internet-connected systems -- including hardware, software and data -- from cyberattacks.

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.

• Hadoop

  Hadoop is an open source distributed processing framework that manages data processing and storage for big data applications running in clustered systems.

• asset management

  Asset management is a financial service offered by professional firms for the holding, transferring, buying and selling of different types of cash and investments.

• software resilience testing

  Software resilience testing is a method of software testing that focuses on ensuring that applications will perform well in real-life or chaotic conditions.

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).

• Kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta, exa, zetta and all that

  Kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta, exa, zetta are among the list of prefixes used to denote the quantity of something, such as a byte or bit in computing and telecommunications.

• DIMM (dual in-line memory module)

  DIMM (dual in-line memory module) is a type of computer memory that is natively 64 bits, enabling fast data transfer.

• RAID 6 (redundant array of independent disks)

  RAID 6, also known as double-parity RAID, uses two parity stripes on each disk. It allows for two disk failures within the RAID set before any data is lost.