Glossary

Accessibility: Area of information control involved with the ability to obtain data.

Accuracy: Area of information control dealing with the correctness of information or lack of errors in information.

Activity-based Costing: Costing method that calculates costs by counting the actual activities that go into making a specific product or delivering a specific service.

Agile Development: System development methodologies used to deal with unpredictability. They adapt to changing requirements by iteratively developing systems in small stages and then testing the new code extensively. They include XP (Extreme Programming), Crystal, Scrum, Feature-Driven Development, and Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM).

Allocation Funding Method: Method for funding IT costs which recovers costs based on something other than usage, such as revenues, login accounts, or number of employees.

Application: A software program designed to facilitate a specific practical task, as opposed to controlling resources. Examples of application programs include Microsoft Word, a word processing application; Lotus 1-2-3, a spreadsheet application; and SAP R/3, an enterprise resource planning application. Contrast to operating system.

Archetype: A pattern from decision rights allocation.

Architecture: Provides a blueprint for translating business strategy into a plan for IS.

ASP (Application Service Provider): An Internet-based company that offers a software application used through their Web site. For example, a company might offer small business applications that a small business owner could use on the Web, rather than buying software to load on their own computers.

Assumptions: Deepest layer of culture or the fundamental part of every culture that helps discern what is real and important to a group; They are unobservable since they reflect organizational values that have become so taken for granted that they guide organizational behavior without any of the groups thinking about them.

Backsourcing: A business practice in which a company takes back in-house assets, activities, and skills that are part of its information systems operations and were previously outsourced to one or more outside IS providers.

Balanced Scorecard: Method which focuses attention on the organization's value drivers (which include, but are not limited to, financial performance). Companies use it to assess the full impact of their corporate strategies on their customers and workforce, as well as their financial performance.

Beliefs: Perceptions that people hold about how things are done in their community.

Big Data: Term used to describe techniques and technologies that make it economical to deal with extremely large datasets at the extreme end of the scale.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD): The scenario when employees bring their own devices to work and connect to enterprise systems. This is commonly used to mean devices such as smart phones, tablets and laptops.

Business Analytics: The use of data, analysis, and modeling to arrive at business decisions. Some organizations use business analytics to create new innovations or to support the modification of existing products or services.

Business Case: A structured document that lays out all the relevant information needed to make a go/no go decision. It contains an executive summary, overview, assumptions, program summary, financial discussion and analysis, discussion of benefits and business impacts, schedule and milestones, risk and contingency analysis, conclusion and recommendations.

Business Continuity Plan: An approved set of preparations and sufficient procedures for responding to a variety of disaster events.

Business Diamond: A simple framework for understanding the design of an organization, linking together the business processes, its values and beliefs, its management control systems, and its tasks and structures.

Business Intelligence: This term refers to the broader practice of using technology, applications, and processes to collect and analyze data to support business decisions.

Business-IT Maturity Model: Framework that displays the demands on the business side and the IT offerings on the supply side to help understand differences in capabilities.

Business Process Management (BPM): A well-defined and optimized set of IT processes, tools, and skills used to manage business processes.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR): Radical change approach which occurs over a short amount of time.

Business Strategy: A plan articulating where a business seeks to go and how it expects to get there.

Business Technology Strategist: The strategic business leader who uses technology as the core tool in creating competitive advantage and aligning business and IT strategies.

Capacity-on-demand: The availability of additional processing capability for a fee.

Captive Center: An overseas subsidiary that is set up to serve the parent company. Companies set up captive centers as an alternative to offshoring.

Centralized Architecture: Architecture where everything is purchased, supported and managed centrally usually in a data center.

Centralized IS Organization: Organization structure that brings together all staff, hardware, software, data, and processing into a single location.

Chargeback Funding Method: Method for funding IT costs in which costs are recovered by charging individuals, departments, or business units based on actual usage and cost.

CIO (Chief Information Officer): The senior-most officer responsible for the information systems activities within the organization. The CIO is a strategic thinker, not an operational manager. The CIO is typically a member of the senior management team and is involved in all major business decisions that come before that team, bringing an information systems perspective to the team.

Client: A software program that requests and receives data and sometimes instructions from another software program, usually running on a separate computer.

Cloud Computing: A style of infrastructure where capacity, applications, and services (such as development, maintenance, or security) are provided by a third-party provider over the Internet often on a “fee for use” basis.

COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology): IT governance framework for decision controls that is consistent with COSO and that provides systematic rigor needed for the strong internal controls and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

Collaboration: Using social IT to extend the reach of stakeholders, both employees and those outside the enterprise walls. Social IT such as social networks enable individuals to find and connect with each other to share ideas, information and expertise.

Complementor: One of the players in a co-opetitive environment. It is a company whose product or service is used in conjunction with a particular product or service to make a more useful set for the customer. (See Value Net.)

Community Manager: The person who helps build, grow, and manage a community.

Cookie: A text message given to a Web browser by a Web server that is used to follow a person's surfing habits.

Co-opetition: A business strategy whereby companies cooperate and compete at the same time.

Consumerization of IT: The drive to port applications to personal devices and the ensuing issues to make them work.

Corporate Budget Funding Method: Method for funding IT costs in which the costs fall to the corporate bottom line, rather than being levied to specific users or business units.

Cost Leadership Strategy: A business strategy where the organization aims to be the lowest-cost producer in the marketplace. (See Differentiation Strategy; Focus Strategy.)

CRM (Customer Relationship Management): The management activities performed to obtain, enhance, and retain customers. CRM is a coordinated set of activities revolving around the customer.

Crowdsourcing: The act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call.

Cycle Plan: A project management plan that organizes project activities in relation to time. It identifies critical beginning and end dates and breaks the work spanning these dates into phases. The general manager tracks the phases to coordinate the eventual transition from project to operational status, a process that culminates on the “go live” date.

Culture: A set of shared values and beliefs that a group holds and that determines how the group perceives, thinks about and appropriately reacts to its various environments; A collective programming of the mind that distinguishes not only societies (or nations), but also industries, professions and organizations.

Dashboard: Common management monitoring tool which provides a snapshot of metrics at any given point in time.

Data: Set of specific, objective facts or observations that standing alone have no intrinsic meaning.

Data Mining: The process of analyzing databases for “gems” that will be useful in management decision making. Typically, data mining is used to refer to the process of combing through massive amounts of customer data to understand buying habits and to identify new products, features, and enhancements.

Database: A collection of data that is formatted and organized to facilitate ease of access, searching, updating, addition, and deletion. A database is typically so large that it must be stored on disk, but sections may be kept in RAM for quicker access. The software program used to manipulate the data in a database is also often referred to as a “database.”

DBA (Database Administrator): The person within the information systems department who manages the data and the database. Typically, this person makes sure that all the data that goes into the database is accurate and appropriate, and that all applications and individuals who need access have it.

Debugging: The process of examining and testing software and hardware to make sure it operates properly under every condition possible. The term is based on calling any problem a “bug”; therefore, eliminating the problem is called “debugging.”

Decentralized Architecture: Architecture in which the hardware, software, networking and data are arranged in a way that distributes the processing and functionality between multiple small computers, servers, and devices and they rely heavily on a network to connect them together.

Decentralized IS Organization: IS organization structure that scatters hardware, software, networks and data components in different locations to address local business needs.

Decision Models: Information systems-based model used by managers for scenario planning and evaluation. The information system collects and analyzes the information from automated processes and presents them to the manager to aid in decision making.

Decision Right: Indicates who in the organization has the responsibility to initiate, supply information for, approve, implement and control various types of decisions.

Differentiation Strategy: A business strategy where the organization qualifies its product or service in a way that allows it to appear unique in the marketplace. (See Cost Leadership Strategy; Focus Strategy.)

Digital Native: An individual who has grown up completely fluent in the use of personal technologies and the Web.

Digital Signature: A digital code applied to an electronically transmitted message used to prove that the sender of a message (e.g., a file or e-mail message) is truly who he or she claims to be.

Direct Cutover: Conversion in which the new system may be installed in stages across locations, or in phases.

Dynamic Business Process (also called agile business process): Agile process that iterates through a constant renewal cycle of design, deliver, evaluate, redesign and so on.

Economic Value Added (EVA): Valuation method which accounts for opportunity costs of capital to measure true economic profit and revalues historical costs to give and accurate picture of thrue market value of assets.

E-mail (electronic mail): A way of transmitting messages over communication networks.

Enacted Values: Value and norms that are actually exhibited or displayed in employee behavior.

Encryption: The translation of data into a code or a form that can be read only by the intended receiver. Data is encrypted using a key or alphanumeric code and can be decrypted only by using the same key.

Engagement: Using social IT to involve stakeholders in the traditional business of the enterprise Social IT such as communities and blogs provide a platform for individuals to join in conversations, create new conversations, offer support to each other, and other activities that create a deeper feeling of connection to the company, brand or enterprise.

Enterprise 2.0: A term used to describe a company using the technologies and practices resulting from Web 2.0 architectures, applications, and services. Enterprise 2.0 typically means a flat organization with unimpeded information flows between all levels and individuals in the organization. Companies adopting these practices seek to be agile, flexible, user driven, on-demand, and transparent.

Enterprise Architecture: The term used for a “blueprint” for the corporation that includes the business strategy, the IT architecture, the business processes, and the organization structure and how all these components relate to each other. Often this term is IT-centric, specifying the IT architecture and all the interrelationships with the structure and processes.

Enterprise System: A set of information systems tools that many organizations use to enable this information flow within and between processes across the organization.

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning Software): A large, highly complex software program that integrates many business functions under a single application. ERP software can include modules for inventory management, supply chain management, accounting, customer support, order tracking, human resource management, and so forth. ERP software is typically integrated with a database.

Espoused Values: Explicitly stated, preferred organization values.

Explicit Knowledge: Objective, theoretical, and codified for transmission in a formal, systematic method using grammar, syntax, and the printed word. (See Tacit Knowledge.)

Extranet: A network based on the Internet standard that connects a business with individuals, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders outside the organization's boundaries. An extranet typically is similar to the Internet; however, it has limited access to those specifically authorized to be part of it.

Farshoring: Form of offshoring that involves sourcing service work to a foreign lower-wage country that is relatively far away in distance or time zone (or both).

Federalism: Organization structuring approach that distributes power, hardware, software, data, and personnel between a central IS group and IS in business units.

File Transfer: Means of transferring a copy of a file from one computer to another over the Internet.

Firewall: A security measure that blocks out undesirable requests for entrance into a Web site and keeps those on the “inside” from reaching outside.

Flat Organization Structure (also called horizontal organization structure): Organization structure with less well-defined chain of command and with ill-defined, fluid jobs.

Focus Strategy: A business strategy where the organization limits its scope to a narrower segment of the market and tailors its offerings to that group of customers. This strategy has two variants: cost focus, in which the organization seeks a cost advantage within its segment, and differentiation focus, in which it seeks to distinguish its products or services within the segment. This strategy allows the organization to achieve a local competitive advantage, even if it does not achieve competitive advantage in the marketplace overall. (See Cost Strategy, Differentiation Strategy.)

Folksonomy: Collaboratively creating and managing a structure for any type of collection, such as a collection of ideas, data, or documents. The term is the merger of “folk” and “taxonomy,” meaning that it is a user-generated taxonomy.

Full Outsourcing: Situation in which an enterprise outsources all its IS functions from desktop services to software development.

Functional View: The view of an organization based on the functional departments, typically including manufacturing, engineering, logistics, sales, marketing, finance, accounting, and human resources. (See Process View.)

Governance (in the context of business enterprises): Making decisions that define expectations, grant power, or verify performance.

Green Computing: An upcoming technology strategy in which companies become more socially responsible by using computing resources efficiently.

Groupware: Software that enables a group to work together on a project, whether in the same room, or from remote locations, by allowing them simultaneous access to the same files. Calendars, written documents, e-mail messages, discussion tools, and databases can be shared.

GUI (Graphical User Interface): The term used to refer to the use of icons, windows, colors, and text as the means of representing information and links on the screen of a computer. GUIs give the user the ability to control actions by clicking on objects rather than by typing commands to the operating system.

Hierarchical Organization Structure: An organization form or structure based on the concepts of division of labor, specialization, spans of control and unity of command.

Hypercompetition: A theory about industries and marketplaces that suggests that the speed and aggressiveness of moves and countermoves in any given market create an environment in which advantages are quickly gained and lost. A hypercompetitive environment is one in which conditions change rapidly.

Identity Theft: The taking of the victim's identity to obtain credit, credit cards from banks and retailers, steal money from the victim's existing accounts, apply for loans, establish accounts with utility companies, rent an apartment, file bankruptcy or obtain a job using the victim's name.

Information: Data endowed with relevance and purpose; data in a context.

Information Ethics: Ethical issues associated with the development and application of information technologies.

Information Integration: Involved with determining information to share, the format of that information, the technological standards they will both use to share it, and the security they will use to ensure that only authorized partners access it.

Information Model: A framework for understanding what information will be crucial to the decision, how to get it, and how to use it.

Information Resource: The available data, technology, people, and processes within an organization to be used by the manager to perform business processes and tasks.

Information System: The combination of technology (the “what”), people (the “who”), and process (the “how”) that an organization uses to produce and manage information.

Information Systems (IS) Strategy: The plan an organization uses in providing information services.

Information Systems Strategy Triangle: The framework connecting business strategy, information system strategy, and organizational systems strategy.

Information Technology: All forms of technology used to create, store, exchange, and use information.

Infrastructure: Everything that supports the flow and processing of information in an organization, including hardware, software, data and network components. It consists of components, chosen and assembled in a manner that best suits the plan and enables the overarching business strategy.

Innovation: Using social IT to identify, describe, prioritized and create new ideas for the enterprise. Social IT offer the community members a forum to suggest new ideas, comment on other ideas, and vote for their favorite idea, giving managers a new way to generate and decide on products and services.

Insourcing: The situation in which a firm provides IS services or develop IS from its own in house IS organization.

Instant Messaging (IM): Internet protocol (IP)-based application that provides real-time text-based communication between people using a variety of different device types, including computer-to-computer and movile devices.

Integrated Supply Chain: An enterprise system that crosses company boundaries and connects vendors and suppliers with organizations to synchronize and streamline planning and deliver products to all members of the supply chain.

Intellectual Capital: The knowledge that has been identified, captured, and leveraged to produce higher-value goods or services or some other competitive advantage for the firm.

Internet: The system of computers and networks that together connect individuals and businesses worldwide. The Internet is a global, interconnected network of millions of individual host computers.

Intranet: A network used within a business to communicate between individuals and departments. An intranet is an application on the Internet, but limited to internal business use. It is a password-protected set of interconnected nodes that is under the company's administrative control. (See Extranets.)

IS (Information Systems): The technology (hardware, software, networking, data), people, and processes that an organization uses to manage information.

ISP (Internet Service Provider): A company who sells access to the Internet. Usually, the service includes a direct line or dial-up number and a quantity of time for using the connection. The service often includes space for hosting subscriber Web pages and e-mail.

IT (Information Technology): The technology component of the information system, usually consisting of the hardware, software, networking, and data.

IT Asset: Anything, tangible or intangible, that can be used by a firm in its processes for creating, producing, and/or offering its products (goods or services).

IT Capability: Something that is learned or developed over time for the firm to create, produce or offer its products.

IT Governance: Specifying the decision rights and accountability framework to encourage desirable behavior in using IT.

IT Portfolio Management: Evaluating new and existing applications collectively on an ongoing basis to determine which applications provide value to the business in order to support decisions to replace, retire, or further invest in applications across the enterprise.

ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library): Control framework that offers a set of concepts and techniques for managing information technology infrastructure, development and operations that was developed in United Kingdom.

Joint Applications Development (JAD): A version of RAD or prototyping in which users are more integrally involved, as a group, with the entire development process up to and, in some cases, including coding.

Knowledge: Information synthesized and contextualized to provide value.

Knowledge Management: The processes necessary to capture, codify, and transfer knowledge across the organization to achieve competitive advantage.

Knowledge Repository: A physical or virtual place where documents with knowledge embedded in them, such as memos, reports, or news articles, are stored so they can be retrieved easily.

LAN (Local Area Network): A network of interconnected (often via Ethernet) workstations that reside within a limited geographic area (typically within a single building or campus). LANs are typically employed so that the machines on them can share resources such as printers or servers and/or so that they can exchange e-mail or other forms of messages (e.g., to control industrial machinery).

Legacy System: Older, mature information system (often 20 to 30 years old).

List Server: A type of e-mail mailing list where users subscribe, and when any user sends a message to the server, a copy of the message is sent to everyone on the list. This allows for restricted-access discussion groups: Only subscribed members can participate in or view the discussions because they are transmitted via e-mail.

Mainframe: A large, central computer that handles all the functionality of the system.

Managerial Levers: Organizational, control, and cultural variables that are used by decision makers to effect changes in their organizations.

Mashup: A term used in the Web 2.0 community to mean the combination of data from multiple sources into one Web page, for example, combining Google Maps with real estate data to produce a diagram showing home price ranges for certain neighborhoods.

Matrix Organization Structure: An organizational form or structure in which workers are assigned two or more supervisors, each supervising a different aspect of the employee's work, in an effort to make sure multiple dimensions of the business are integrated.

Middleware: Software used to connect processes running in one or more computers across a network.

Mission: A clear and compelling statement that unifies an organization's effort and describes what the firm is all about (i.e., its purpose).

Mobile Workers: Individuals who work wherever they are physically located.

Nearshoring: Sourcing service work to a foreign, lower-wage country that is relatively close in distance or time zone (or both).

Net Present Value (NPV): Valuation method that takes into account the time value of money in which cash inflows and outflows are discounted.

Network Effect: The value of a network node to a person or organization in the network increases when another joins the network.

Networked Organization Structure: Organization form or structure where rigid hierarchies are replaced by formal and informal communication networks that connect all parts of the company; Organization stucture known for it flexibility and adaptiveness.

Newsgroup: A type of electronic discussion in which the text of the discussions typically is viewable on an Internet or intranet Web page rather than sent through e-mail. Unless this page is shielded with a firewall or password, outsiders are able to view and/or participate in the discussion.

Object: Encapsulates both the data stored about an entity and the operations that manipulate that data.

Observable Artifacts: Most visible layer of culture that includes physical manifestations such as traditional dress, symbols in art, acronyms, awards, myths and stories about the group, rituals and ceremonies, etc.

Offshoring (short for outsourcing offshore): Situation in which IS organization uses contractor services, or even builds its own data center, in a distant land.

Onshoring (also called inshoring): Situation in which outsourcing work is performed domestically.

Open Source Software (OSS): Software released under a license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

Open Sourcing: A development approach called the process of building and improving “free” software by an Internet community.

Operating System (OS): A program that manages all other programs running on, as well as all the resources connected to, a computer. Examples include Microsoft Windows, DOS, and UNIX.

Oracle: A widely used database program.

Organizational Strategy: A plan that answers the question: “How will the company organize to achieve its goals and implement its business strategy?; includes the organization's design as well as the choices it makes to define, set up, coordinate, and control its work processes.

Organizational Systems: The fundamental elements of a business including people, work processes, structure, and the plan that enables them to work efficiently to achieve business goals.

Outsourcing: The business arrangement where third-party providers and vendors manage the information systems activities. In a typical outsourced arrangement, the company finds vendors to take care of the operational activities, the support activities, and the systems development activities, saving strategic decisions for the internal information systems personnel.

Parallel Conversion: Conversion in which the old system stops running as soon as the new system is installed.

Peer-to-Peer: Infrastructure that allows networked computers to share resources without a central server playing a dominant role.

Platform: The hardware and software on which applications are run. For example, the iPhone is considered a platform for many applications and service that can be run on it.

Portal: Easy-to-use Web sites that provide access to search engines, critical information, research, applications, and processes that individuals want.

Privacy: Area of information control involved with the right to be left alone; involved with the protections from intrusion and information gathering by others; an individuals' ability to personally control information about themselves.

Process: An interrelated, sequential set of activities and tasks that turn inputs into outputs and has a distinct beginning, a clear deliverable at the end, and a set of metrics that are useful to measure performance.

Process View: The view of a business from the perspective of the business processes performed. Typically the view is made up of cross-functional processes that transverse disciplines, departments, functions, and even organizations. (See Functional View.)

Project: A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. Temporary means that every project has a definite beginning and a definite end.

Project Manager: Person who makes sure that the entire project is executed appropriately and coordinated properly; defines project scope realistically and manages project so that it can be completed on time and within budget.

Project Management: An application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.

Project Management Office (PMO): The organizational unit within which resides the expertise for managing projects.

Project Stakeholder: Individual or organization that is actively involved in the project, or whose interests may be affected as a result of project execution or project completion. Property: Area of information control focused on who owns the data.

Protocol: A special, typically standardized, set of rules used by computers to enable communication between them.

Prototyping: An evolutionary development method for building an information system. Developers get the general idea of what is needed by the users, and then build a fast, high-level version of the system as the beginning of the project. The idea of prototyping is to quickly get a version of the software in the hands of the users, and to jointly evolve the system through a series of cycles of design and build, then use and evaluate.

RAD (Rapid Application Development): This process is similar to prototyping in that it is an interactive process, where tools are used to speed up development. RAD systems typically have tools for developing the user, reusable code, code generation, and programming language testing and debugging. These tools make it easy for the developer to build a library of a common, standard set of code that can easily be used in multiple applications.

Resource-Based View (RBV): A view that attaining and sustaining competitive advantage comes from creating value using information and other resources of the firm.

Reengineering: The management process of redesigning business processes in a relatively radical manner. Reengineering traditionally meant taking a “blank piece of paper” and designing (then building) a business process from the beginning. This was intended to help the designers eliminate any blocks or barriers that the current process or environment might provide. This process is sometimes called BPR, Business Process Redesign or Reengineering or Business Reengineering.

Return on Investment: Valuation method which calculates the percentage rate that measure the relationship between the amount the business gets back from an investment and the amount invested.

Review Board: A committee that is formally designated to approve, monitor, and review specific topics.

Reuse: Relatively small chunks of functionality are available for many applications.

RSS or Really Simple Syndication (also called Web feeds): Refers to a structured file format for porting data from one platform or information system to another.

SAP: The company that produces the leading ERP software. The software, technically named “SAP R/3,” is often simply referred to as SAP.

Sarbanes-Oxley (SoX) Act of 2002: United States federal statute increasing regulatory visibility and accountability of public companies and their financial health.

Scalable: Refers to how well an infrastructure component can adapt to increased, or in some cases decreased, demands.

Selective Outsourcing: The situation when an enterprise chooses which IT capabilities to retain in-house and which to give to an outsider.

Server: A software program or computer intended to provide data and/or instructions to another software program or computer. The hardware on which a server program runs is often also referred to as “the server.”

Service-Level Agreement (or SLA): Formal service contract between clients and outrsourcing providers that describes level of service including deliveray time and expected service performance.

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): This is the term used to describe the architecture where business processes are built using services delivered over a network (typically the Internet). Services are software that are distinct units of business functionality residing on different parts of a network and can be combined and reused to create business applications.

Silos: Self-contained functional units.

Six Sigma: An incremental data-driven approach to quality management for eliminating defects from a process. The term “Six Sigma” comes from the idea that if the quality of all output from a process were to be mapped on a bell-shaped curve, the tail of the curve, six sigma from the mean, would be where there were less than 3.4 defects per million.

Social Business: An enterprise whose basic business model engages communities as a core competency and builds processes based on capabilities only available through the use of social IT.

Social Business Strategy: A plan of how the firm will use social IT to engage, collaboration and innovate. The social business strategy is aligned with organization strategy and IS strategy; includes a vision of how the business would operate if it seamlessly and thoroughly incorporated social and collaborative capabilities throughout the business model.

Social Contract Theory: A theory used in business ethics to describe how managers should act. Social contract theorists ask what conditions would have to be met for the members of such a society to agree to allow a corporation to be formed. Thus, society bestows legal recognition on a corporation to allow it to employ social resources toward given ends.

Social IT: The technologies used for collaboration, engagement and innovation over the Web. Typically these tools enable communities of people to chat, network, and share information. Common applications are social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, crowdsourcing, blogs, microblogs such as Twitter, and location-based such as Foursquare.

Social Media: The marketing and sales applications of social IT.

Social Networking Site: A Web site available from a Web-based service that allows members of the service to create a public profile within a bounded system, list other users with whom they share a connection, and view and interact with their list of connections and those made by others within the system. Examples are MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): This term is used to describe a model of software deployment that uses the Web to deliver applications on an “as-needed” basis. Often when software is delivered as a service, it runs on a computer on the Internet, rather than on the customer's computer, and is accessed through a Web browser.

Stakeholder Theory: A theory used in business ethics to describe how managers should act. This theory suggests that managers, although bound by their relation to stockholders, are entrusted also with a fiduciary responsibility to all those who hold a stake in or a claim on the firm, including employees, customers, vendors, neighbors, etc.

Standardization: The process of agreeing on technical specifications that will be followed throughout the infrastructure. Often standards are agreed on for development processes, technology, methods, practices, and software.

Steering Committee: IT governance mechanism which calls for joint participation of IT and business leaders in making decisions about IT as a group.

Stockholder Theory: A theory used in business ethics to describe how managers should act. Stockholders advance capital to corporate managers who act as agents in advancing their ends. The nature of this contract binds managers to act in the interest of the shareholders (i.e., to maximize shareholder value).

Strategic Alliance: An interorganizational relationship that affords one or more companies in the relationship a strategic advantage.

Strategic Network: A long-term purposeful arrangement by which companies set up a web of close relationships to provide product or services in a coordinated way to those companies in the system of relationships.

Strategy: A coordinated set of actions to fulfill objectives, purposes, and goals.

Supply Chain Management (SCM) System: System that manages the integrated supply chain; processes are linked across companies with a companion process at a customer or supplier.

Synchronized Planning: Partners agree on a joint design of planning, forecasting, replenishment and what to do with the information.

Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC): The process of designing and delivering the entire system. SDLC usually means these seven phases: initiation of the project, requirements definition phase, functional design phase, technical design and construction phase, verification phase, implementation phase, and maintenance and review phase.

Tacit Knowledge: Personal, context-specific, and hard to formalize and communicate. It consists of experiences, beliefs, and skills. Tacit knowledge is entirely subjective and is often acquired through physically practicing a skill or activity. (See Explicit Knowledge.)

Tagging: Process in which users themselves list key words that codify the information or document at hand, creates an ad-hoc codification system, sometimes referred to as a folksonomy..

Telecommuting: Combining telecommunications with commuting. This term usually means individuals who regularly work from home instead of commuting into an office. However, it is often used to mean anyone who works regularly from a location outside their company's office.

TOGAF (also called The Open Group Architecture Framework): Includes a methodology and set of resources for developing an enterprise architecture based on the idea of an open architecture, an architecture whose specifications are public (as compared to a proprietary architecture, where specifications are not made public).

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): Costing method that looks beyond initial capital investments to include costs associated with technical support, administration, training, system retirement, etc.

Total Quality Management (TQM): A management philosophy in which quality metrics drive performance evaluation of people, processes, and decisions. The objective of TQM is to continually, and often incrementally, improve the activities of the business toward the goal of eliminating defects (zero defects) and producing the highest quality outputs possible.

Unified Communications (UC): An evolving communications technology architecture that automates and unifies all forms of human and device communications in context and with a common experience.

Utility Computing: Purchasing entire computing capability on an as-needed basis.

Value: Reflects the community's aspirations about the way things should be done.

Value Net: The set of players in a co-opetitive environment. It includes a company and its competitors and complementors, as well as their customers and suppliers, and the interactions among all of them. (See Complementor.)

Video Teleconference (also called videoconference): A set of interactive telecommunication technologies that allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously.

Virtual Corporation: A temporary network of companies who are linked by information technology to exploit fast-changing opportunities.

Virtual Private Network (VPN): A private network that uses a public network such as the Internet to connect remote sites or users. It maintains privacy through the use of a tunneling protocol and security procedures.

Virtual Team: Two or more people who (1) work together interdependently with mutual accountability for achieving common goals, (2) do not work in either the same place and/or at the same time, and (3) must use electronic communication technology to communicate, coordinate their activities and complete their team's tasks.

Virtual World: A computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact via avatars.

Virtualization: Allows a computer to run multiple operating systems or several versions of the same operating system at the same time; virtual infrastructure where software replaced hardware in a way that a ‘virtual machine’ or a ‘virtual desktop system’ was accessible to provide computing power.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP): A method for taking analog audio signals, like the kind you hear when you talk on the phone, and turning them into digital data that can be transmitted over the Internet.

Web 2.0: The term given to the Internet and its applications that support collaboration, social networking, social media, RSS, mashups, and a number of other information sharing tools. The term is used to distinguish it from Web 1.0, which was mostly used for transactions and information dissemination. Web 2.0 is not about different technical specifications, but about using the Internet in different ways from Web 1.0.

Web-based Architecture: Architecture in which significant hardware, software, and possibly even data elements reside on the Internet.

Web Logs (Blogs): Online journals that link together into a very large network of information sharing.

Web Services: The software systems that are offered over the Internet and executed on a third party's hardware. Often Web services refer to a more fundamental software that use XML messages and follow SOAP (simple object access protocol) standards.

Wide Area Network (WAN): A computer network that spans multiple offices, often dispersed over a wide geographic area. A WAN typically consists of transmission lines leased from telephone companies.

Wiki: Software that allows users to work collaboratively to create, edit, and link Web pages easily.

Wireless (Mobile) Infrastructure: Infrastructure that allows communication from remote locations using a variety of wireless technologies (e.g., fixed microwave links, wireless LANs, data over cellular networks, wireless WANs, satellite links, digital dispatch networks, one-way and two-way paging networks, diffuse infrared, laser-based communications, keyless car entry, and global positioning systems).

Wisdom: Knowledge fused with intuition and judgment that facilitates the ability to make decisions.

Workflow: Describes activities that take place in a business process.

Zachman Framework: Enterprise architecture that determines architectural requirements by providing a broad view that helps guide the analysis of the detailed view.

Zero Time Organization: An organization designed around responding instantly to customers, employees, suppliers, and other stakeholder demands.