Glossary

A collection of common data from disparate sources that is compiled and presented in summary form.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a suite of cloud-computing services. These cloud services make up an on-demand computing platform, therefore, offering security and reliability to the enterprise. Amazon cloud services operate from 16 geographical regions across the world.

Application code that enables other applications to communicate or connect with it.

A software component that is added to an existing application that enables the application to be deployed or customised automatically without manual intervention.

Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) is a sophisticated prediction model that uses time series data to predict future trends. Buttonwood Cloud Analytics uses the ARIMA model to predict future cloud spend to ensure organisations don’t go over their budget.

A design for a technology service that can be implemented through automation or orchestration.

Within Cloud Broker, an administrator has the power to delegate, or assign, budgets to specific users, within defined parameters. This feature of the Broker ensures financial governance and control.

A Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) is a software tool or service that acts as a gatekeep between enterprises on-premise infrastructure and cloud infrastructure. With a CASB, the enterprise can extend the reach of their security policies beyond their on-premise infrastructure into the cloud.

NIST describes cloud computing as a model that enables ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services). These resources can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

A person or entity that has empowered their organisation with the benefits of cloud, while minimising and in some cases eliminating the challenges it brings.

A multi-tenancy that is shared among organisations that share commonalities in computing requirements.

A consumption-based model is a service provision and payment scheme in which the customer pays according to the resources used and consumed. SaaS applications often use a consumption-based pricing model.

The Cost Centre policy enables organisations to control which users have access to which cost centres.

A facility used to house IT infrastructure components.

Ownership, protection and control of data subject to the laws of the jurisdiction or country it resides within.

Delegation Authority means that particular people within the organisation have the ability to delegate budgets and cost centres to other users.

Dell EMC Networker provides a suite of enterprise-level data protection software that unifies and automates backup to tape, disk-based, and flash-based storage media across physical and virtual environments for granular and disaster recovery. Buttonwood Cloud Broker has an EMC Networker Integration.

To build infrastructure or install applications across a large diverse computing platform.

Digital transformation is the change associated with the application of digital technology in all aspects of human society. It is a term spoken about a lot in association with enterprises adopting new technology to improve business processes.

The cloud is elastic, meaning that resource allocation can get bigger or smaller depending on demand. Elasticity enables scalability, which means that the cloud can scale upward for peak demand and downward for lighter demand. Scalability also means that an application can scale when adding users and when application requirements change.

Coding to protect your information assets.

Chargeback and showback systems quantify which departments or individuals are responsible for significant internal expenses. Chargeback and Showback reporting shows the factors that drive IT expenditures.

Public or private cloud services that are provided by a third party outside the organisation. A cloud computing environment that is external to the boundaries of the organisation.

Governance connects business focus with IT management to assure the investment in IT generates business value and mitigates the risks associated with IT initiatives.

An application designer that visualises the results of compiling resource modules to build a target architecture, without exposing the application code.

An operational control that defines the timeframe for the availability of a service to ensure the service is consumed cost effectively.

Hybrid cloud computing refers to policy-based and orchestrated service provisioning, use and management, across a mixture of internal and external services hosted on-premise or in a public cloud.

The security discipline that enables the right individuals to access the right resources at the right times for the right reasons. IAM addresses the mission-critical need to ensure appropriate access to resources across increasingly heterogeneous technology environments, and to meet increasingly rigorous compliance requirements.

An authentication platform enabling single sign-on across a variety of end-user devices and applications, consumed as a cloud service.

A standardised, highly automated offering, where compute resources, complemented by storage and networking capabilities are owned and hosted by a service provider and offered to customers on-demand.

Integration in an IT context is the coupling of separate technology components into a larger single system. This can occur by physically connecting hardware components, or interfacing application components through code.

A type of private cloud whose services are provided by an IT department to those in its own organization.

A unique identifier associated with a device on a computer network or the internet, that allows it to be located and contacted using the Internet Protocol (IP) communications.

Cloud Broker has a built-in LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) to streamline the user login process and automate administrative tasks

The Lease Policy enables organisations to control the duration of a lease based on the blueprint.

A lease reservation in the Cloud Broker is a reserved amount of the budget. This reserved amount from the budget can either be added manually through the Cloud Workspace or automatically when a new cloud resource is deployed.

Physical or virtual devices that distribute application traffic across multiple servers to enhance capacity, performance, and resilience of the hosted service.

The preferred subscription cost proposed by a cloud service provider that offers the best value in meeting an organisations business criteria for consuming the service.

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure created by Microsoft for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centres. Workspace, Analytics and Broker all have a Microsoft Azure integration.

A method for consuming cloud services based upon the service offered such as Iaas or SaaS.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a security system that requires more than one method of authentication from independent categories of credentials to verify the user’s identity. MFA prevents compromised credentials across every user and every IT resource.

Logical or physical boundaries established for computer communications to constrain or separate traffic in order to manage network capacity, performance, and security.

Office 365 is the brand name Microsoft uses for a group of software and services subscriptions, which together provide productivity software and related services to subscribers.

Computing resources and applications are hosted in a local data centre owned, operated, and managed by individual organisations.

Low-level software that abstracts a computers hardware resources and presents them to applications installed on the hosting computer.

Oracle is a global provider of enterprise cloud computing, empowering businesses of all sizes on their journey of digital transformation. Oracle Cloud provides leading-edge capabilities in software as a service, platform as a service, infrastructure as a service, and data as a service.

A toolset that co-ordinates and controls automation tasks across multiple application domains for the purpose of deploying or integrating software systems.

A rule-set to control the geographical location of cloud based infrastructure and data to ensure it complies with corporate or national security guidelines and practices.

Independent communication channel between a providing and consuming software program for building mobile and cloud based applications.

Salesforce is a company that primarily provides a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) service which is broken down into several broad categories: Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Data Cloud (including Jigsaw), Marketing Cloud, Community Cloud (including Chatter), Analytics Cloud, App Cloud, and IoT with over 100,000 customers.

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ScienceLogic is software that produces information technology (IT) management and monitoring solutions for IT Operations and Cloud Computing. Buttonwood Cloud Broker has a ScienceLogic plugin.

SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) allows for the automation of the exchange of user identity information between identity domains, and IT systems.

SIAM is a set of practices and an accompanying model and approach that adapt and augment ITIL for managing, governing, and co-ordinating the delivery of services provided by multiple suppliers internal and external to the business organisation.

SOA is an application architecture composed of discrete software modules that have simple, well defined interfaces that can be orchestrated through a loose coupling to perform a required function in a larger solution platform.

ServiceNow provides software for everything-as-a-service cloud computing, including platform-as-a-service (PaaS) enterprise service management software for human resources, law, facilities management, finance, marketing, and field operations. Buttonwood Cloud Broker has a ServiceNow plugin.

A Sizing Policy is an operational control that sets the scale of a cloud deployment by the compute resources or number of virtual instances consumed. Eg. A full scale deployment is a 100% sizing policy, while a 50% sizing policy halves the size of resources or instances respectively. A sizing policy option exists in the Buttonwood Cloud Broker.

Software as a Service (SaaS) is defined as popular business applications delivered to consumers via the internet using a consumption-based cost model.

A subscription–based model is a pricing structure that allows users to purchase or subscribe to a vendor’s IT services for a specific period of time for a set price. Subscribers typically commit to the services on a monthly or annual basis.

User account provisioning is creating, managing and deactivation of an end user’s objects and attributes in relation to accessing resources available in one or more systems. Buttonwood makes user provisioning simple with SCIM.

Vendor Lock-In describes an inherent dependency created on a single supplier through subscribing to their proprietary services and products. The Buttonwood Cloud Exchange platform aims to remove this dependency by ensuring that organisations are free to choose a cloud vendor based on their needs, not their contracts.

A Virtual Machine is a computer system emulation based on computer architecture, providing the functionality of a physical computer.

VMware provides cloud and virtualization software and services. Both Buttonwood Cloud Broker and Buttonwood Cloud Analytics have VMware plugins.