If you don’t work within an I.T department, discussing your company’s cloud setup can sometimes make you wish you had an AWS dictionary. Frequent use of acronyms, jargon, and AWS terminology, will often leave you with more questions than you originally started with.
Cloud jargon, alongside a lack of common knowledge, will often lead many to believe the technology is more complicated than it actually is. Yet, within a financial or managerial role, AWS plays an increasingly important role in business objectives, and it’s therefore vital to have some understanding of AWS terminology.
How does AWS affect my business?
If you’re having to brush-up on your cloud language, it’s likely your company’s AWS setup could be an area of concern – perhaps due to a problem occurring.
Problems encountered with AWS might include:
- Increased AWS bills, as servers are switched on but not actually used.
- Poor cost clarity, as management is locked within I.T.
- Developers request bigger servers, as slow speeds are affecting development.
It could even be the case that a developer could have flagged a particular issue, or a senior director / business owner may have identified that increasing costs have affected the bottom line, and have asked you to investigate.
If untreated, the long-term implications of such problems will often increase the total cost of ownership (TCO) attached to AWS, in-turn lowering your campaign budgets, and putting a strain on available resources which delay project completion.
But the cloud isn’t my field – why bother learning jargon?
Believing that cloud-related responsibilities are just for the I.T department is perhaps wrong, and as AWS continues to grow (currently 81% year-on-year), it pays to invest some time to understand what underlying terms associated with the ‘Cloud’, AWS, and EC2 actually mean.
Alongside this, cloud stakeholders should ideally extend beyond the I.T group and throughout all departments who utilise the cloud. Creating a culture of responsibility that actually makes real changes towards cloud efficiency – as supported by Michelle Boisvert from TechTarget
Nonetheless, jargon has become so implicit within cloud-computing, that for anyone other than a developer, it can be tricky to pick-up the fundamentals.
In the likely event you’ll have to find a solution and engage with developers to implement a course of action, learning jargon provides benefits to understanding more detailed cloud discussions – which allows for more dynamic and valuable conversations with your developers. Plus it makes you look more informed to senior managers!
10 easy examples
To help establish your jargon vocabulary, we’ve already done some of the hard work for you and prepared a list of easy-to-digest I.T terms for cloud beginners.
#1 The ‘Cloud’: Cloud Computing – Rather than use physical servers on your premises, using the ‘cloud’ just means using a network of remote serves hosted on the internet.
#2 AWS: Amazon Web Services – This is Amazon’s collection of cloud and web service offerings, one of which is EC2.
#3 EC2: Elastic Compute Cloud – This is the AWS cloud compute offering, where users can pay for computing servers to test and run applications.
#4 Public Cloud – a model in which third-party service providers (like Amazon)offers storage, servers, and applications to the general public over the internet, usually on a pay-as-you-go basis.
#5 Private Cloud – a model in which your company has a private cloud setup behind a corporate firewall
#6 Hybrid Cloud – a mix of both public and private cloud models, where usage alternates depending on demand.
#7 Big Data – a large volume of data that cannot be easily processed or integrated, but still contains valuable insights.
#8 DevOps (Development and Operations) – a phrase used to describe the relationship between both the development and operations departments, with the goal of improving agile communications between them.
#9 IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) – a service distribution model of cloud computing that provides virtualised computing resources, such as storage and processing over the internet.
#10 IoT (Internet of Things) – a concept where the growing amount of physical ‘things’, like everyday objects, can connect to the internet and exchange data.
Extra AWS Resource!
#11: To help support your AWS knowledge even further, we’ve also developed an AWS Jargon webpage and Infographic, with a range of other learnable terms (except for 2) – ideal for printing out and using as an AWS resource later on!
However, if you’re searching for a very particular term, we’d recommend visiting Amazon’s own glossary page, which provides a comprehensive list of all AWS terms.
Thanks – but what if I need more help?
If you don’t understand all of these terms straight away, don’t worry – you’re not trying to become an expert! At least now you’ll be able to talk these topics through with a developer, and be better placed to provide useful suggestions.
In turn, the value this knowledge provides is that it enables you to process cloud discussions and communicate with other technicians, without having to pause and check a specific term – saving you valuable time that your busy schedule doesn’t allow for!
If you’ve been researching AWS terminology in relation to a potential cost-efficiency problem, then it might be worth checking out Cloud Machine Manager. CMM is a cost-saving software tool that provides ‘real’ on-demand control, automation, and scheduling for AWS EC2 servers, allowing you to switch them off when they’re no longer needed, and with the potential to reduce your AWS EC2 bills by 90%.
Good info.. Thanks