Software applications

Definitions related to software applications, including tech terms about software programs for vertical industries and words and phrases about software development, use and management.
  • What is a framework? - In general, a framework is a real or conceptual structure intended to serve as a support or guide for the building of something that expands the structure into something useful.
  • What is a private cloud? Definition and examples - Private cloud is a type of cloud computing that delivers advantages similar to public cloud, including scalability and self-service, but through a proprietary architecture.
  • What is a reactive systems architecture? - A computer systems paradigm that takes advantage of the responsiveness, flexibility and resiliency of reactive programming, so that various components can take continue to function and even thrive if any component is compromised.
  • What is a recommendation engine? - A recommendation engine is a system that gives customers recommendations based on their behavior patterns and similarities to people who might have shared preferences.
  • What is a request for proposal (RFP)? - A request for proposal (RFP) is a document an organization uses when it's searching for a product or service to meet specific requirements.
  • What is a restricted API? - A restricted API is an application program interface whose access, or use, is intentionally limited by web site developers for security purposes or business reasons.
  • What is a software license? - A software license is a document that provides legally binding guidelines for the use and distribution of software.
  • What is a software stack? - A software stack is a collection of independent components that work together to support the execution of an application.
  • What is a test case? - A test case is a set of actions performed on a system to determine if it satisfies software requirements and functions correctly.
  • What is a voice user interface (VUI)? - A voice user interface (VUI) is a type of interface that relies on speech recognition technology to enable users to interact with an application or device through voice commands.
  • What is Agile software development? - Agile is a type of software development methodology that anticipates the need for flexibility and applies a level of pragmatism to the delivery of the finished product.
  • What is AI? Artificial Intelligence explained - Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems.
  • What is an abandoned call? - An abandoned call is a call or other type of contact initiated to a call center or contact center that is ended before any conversation occurs.
  • What is an API (application programming interface)? - An application programming interface (API) is code that enables two software programs to communicate.
  • What is an application architecture? - An application architecture is a structural map of how a software application is assembled and how applications interact with each other to meet business or user requirements.
  • What is an application? - An application, also referred to as an application program or application software, is a computer software package that performs a specific function directly for an end user or, in some cases, for another application.
  • What is an electronic health record (EHR)? - An electronic health record (EHR) is an individual's official health document that's shared among multiple facilities and agencies.
  • What is an information system (IS)? - An information system (IS) is an interconnected set of components used to collect, store, process and transmit data and digital information.
  • What is Apache JMeter? - Apache JMeter is open source software for load testing applications and measuring their performance.
  • What is APM? Application performance monitoring guide - Application performance monitoring (APM) is the collection of tools and processes designed to help IT professionals ensure that enterprise applications meet the performance, reliability and valuable user experience (UX) required by employees, partners and customers.
  • What is application lifecycle management? - Application lifecycle management (ALM) is the process of managing a software lifecycle from creation to its end of life.
  • What is blue/green deployment? - A blue/green deployment is a change management strategy for releasing software code.
  • What is business intelligence (BI)? A detailed guide - Business intelligence, or BI, is a technology-driven data analysis process that helps an organization's executives, managers and workers make informed business decisions.
  • What is business intelligence architecture (BI architecture)? - A business intelligence architecture is a framework for the various technologies an organization deploys to run business intelligence and analytics applications.
  • What is Change Healthcare? - Change Healthcare is a healthcare technology provider specializing in revenue cycle management, payment management and health information exchange solutions.
  • What is cloud application performance management (cloud APM)? - Cloud application performance management (cloud APM) is the process of monitoring resources that support software application performance in public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud environments.
  • What is CRM (customer relationship management)? - CRM (customer relationship management) is the combination of practices, strategies and technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle.
  • What is Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code? - Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) is a medical code set that enables physicians and other healthcare providers to describe and report the medical, surgical, and diagnostic procedures and services they perform to government and private payers, researchers and other interested parties.
  • What is customer segmentation? - Customer segmentation is the practice of dividing a customer base into groups of individuals that have similar characteristics relevant to marketing, such as age, gender, interests and spending habits.
  • What is cybersecurity? - Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting internet-connected systems such as hardware, software and data from cyberthreats.
  • What is data aggregation? - Data aggregation is any process whereby data is gathered and expressed in a summary form.
  • What is demand planning and why is it important? - Demand planning is the process of forecasting the demand for a product or service so it can be produced and delivered more efficiently and to the satisfaction of customers.
  • What is digital health (digital healthcare)? - Digital health, also known as digital healthcare, is the use of digital technologies in healthcare.
  • What is employee self-service (ESS)? - Employee self-service (ESS) is a widely used human resources technology that enables employees to perform many job-related functions that were once largely paper-based, or otherwise maintained by management, administrative or HR staff.
  • What is enterprise content management? Guide to ECM - Enterprise content management is a set of defined processes, strategies and tools that enables a business to obtain, organize, store and deliver critical information to its employees, business stakeholders and customers.
  • What is Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)? - An enterprise service bus (ESB) is a software platform used to distribute work among connected components of an application.
  • What is financial analytics and why is it important? - Financial analytics is the creation of ad hoc analysis to answer specific business questions and forecast possible future financial scenarios.
  • What is functional testing and how does it work? - Functional testing is a process used to evaluate software during development to ensure that it meets the application's intended requirements and specifications.
  • What is GraalVM? - GraalVM is a tool for developers to write and execute Java code.
  • What is Hitachi Vantara? - Hitachi Vantara is a data storage systems provider, previously known as Hitachi Data Systems (HDS).
  • What is ICD-9-CM (International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification)? - The International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification, also known simply as ICD-9-CM, is the U.
  • What is image metadata and how is it used? - Image metadata is text information pertaining to an image file that is embedded into the file or saved to a separate file that is associated with the image file.
  • What is integration testing (I&T)? - Integration testing -- also known as integration and testing or I&T -- is a type of software testing in which the different units, modules or components of a software application are tested as a combined entity.
  • What is interactive voice response (IVR)? - Interactive voice response (IVR) is an automated telephony system that interacts with callers, gathers information and routes calls to the appropriate recipients.
  • What is IT/OT convergence? Everything you need to know - IT/OT convergence is the integration of information technology (IT) systems with operational technology (OT) systems.
  • What is Jira? - Jira is an application lifecycle management (ALM) and Agile project management tool from Atlassian.
  • What is language modeling? - Language modeling, or LM, is the use of various statistical and probabilistic techniques to determine the probability of a given sequence of words occurring in a sentence.
  • What is machine translation? - Machine translation technology enables the conversion of text or speech from one language to another using computer algorithms.
  • What is Microsoft Copilot? In-depth guide to versions and uses - Microsoft Copilot is an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chat service that integrates with many other Microsoft applications and services to support user efficiency and productivity.
  • What is Microsoft SharePoint and its important features? - Microsoft SharePoint is a document management and collaboration platform that helps organizations oversee, control and work with archives, documents, reports and other content that is vital to their business processes.
  • What is named entity recognition (NER)? - Named entity recognition (NER) is a natural language processing (NLP) method that extracts information from text.
  • What is nearshore outsourcing and how does it work? - Nearshore outsourcing is the practice of getting work done or services performed by people in neighboring countries rather than an organization's own country.
  • What is no-code? Everything you need to know - No-code is a software development approach that requires few, if any, programming skills to quickly build an application, website or module that links into an existing system.
  • What is Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN)? - Oracle PartnerNetwork, also known as OPN, is a channel partner program that provides resources and benefits for value-added resellers (VARs), independent software vendors (ISVs) and other businesses that want to collaborate with Oracle.
  • What is Oracle? - Oracle is one of the largest vendors in the enterprise IT market and the shorthand name of its flagship product, a relational database management system (RDBMS) that's formally called Oracle Database.
  • What is PaaS? Platform as a service definition and guide - Platform as a service (PaaS) is a cloud computing model where a third-party provider delivers hardware and software tools to users over the internet.
  • What is patch management? Lifecycle, benefits and best practices - Patch management is the subset of systems management that involves identifying, acquiring, testing and installing patches, or code changes, that are intended to fix bugs, close security holes or add features.
  • What is pay for performance (P4P)? - Pay for performance (P4P) in healthcare is a payment model where hospitals, physicians and other healthcare workers are given financial incentives for meeting performance objectives.
  • What is PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act)? - PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act, sometimes seen as Plan, Do, Check, Adjust) is a repetitive four-stage model for continuous improvement in business process management.
  • What is PHI (protected or personal health information)? - Protected health information (PHI), also referred to as 'personal health information,' is the demographic information, medical histories, test and laboratory results, physical and mental health conditions, insurance information and other data that a healthcare professional collects to identify an individual and determine appropriate care.
  • What is picture archiving and communication system (PACS)? - Picture archiving and communication system (PACS) is a medical imaging technology used primarily in healthcare organizations to securely store and digitally transmit electronic images and clinically relevant reports.
  • What is predictive analytics? An enterprise guide - Predictive analytics is a form of advanced analytics that uses current and historical data to forecast activity, behavior and trends.
  • What is professional services automation (PSA)? - Professional services automation (PSA) is a type of software application suite that provides a service business with the functionality it needs to manage core business processes.
  • What is SaaS (software as a service)? - Software as a service (SaaS) is a software distribution model in which a cloud provider hosts applications and makes them available to end users over the internet.
  • What is SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC)? - SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) is an on-premises enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
  • What is SAP ERP? - SAP ERP is enterprise resource planning software developed by the company SAP SE.
  • What is SAP S/4HANA Finance? - SAP S/4HANA Finance is a financial application that's part of the SAP S/4HANA enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform.
  • What is SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition)? - SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) is a category of industrial control systems (ICS) that remotely gathers data in real time from industrial processes in order to supervise and control equipment and conditions.
  • What is shift-right testing? - Shift-right testing is a method of continuously testing software while it is in a post-production environment.
  • What is Six Sigma and how does it work? - Six Sigma is a business methodology for quality improvement that measures how many defects there are in a current process and seeks to systematically eliminate them.
  • What is software resilience testing? - Software resilience testing is a method of software testing that focuses on ensuring that applications perform well in real-life or chaotic conditions.
  • What is speech recognition? - Speech recognition, or speech-to-text, is the ability of a machine or program to identify words spoken aloud and convert them into readable text.
  • What is supervised learning? - Supervised learning is a subcategory of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) where a computer algorithm is trained on input data that has been labeled for a particular output.
  • What is telephony? - Telephony is technology associated with interactive communication between two or more physically distant parties using the electronic transmission of data.
  • What is the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA)? - The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB Act or GLBA), also known as the Financial Modernization Act of 1999, is a federal law enacted in the United States to control the ways financial institutions deal with the private information of individuals.
  • What is user acceptance testing (UAT)? - User acceptance testing (UAT), also called application testing or end-user testing, is a phase of software development in which the software is tested in the real world by its intended audience.
  • What is virtual reality? How it's used and how it will evolve - Virtual reality, or VR, is a simulated three-dimensional (3D) environment that lets users explore and interact with a virtual surrounding in a way that approximates reality, as it's perceived through the users' senses.
  • What is web application (web apps) and its benefits? - A web application (web app) is an application program that is stored on a remote server and delivered over the internet through a browser interface.
  • What is webhook? - A webhook is a software architecture approach that allows applications and services to submit a web-based notification to other applications whenever a specific event occurs.
  • wiki - A wiki is a web-based collaborative platform that enables users to store, create and modify content in an organized manner.
  • Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) utility - The Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) utility is a command-line interface for working with Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), a framework for managing data and operations on a Windows computer.
  • WinZip - WinZip is a software product used to archive, compress and encrypt files in a variety of archive formats for more efficient storage and distribution.
  • workflow - Workflow is the series of activities that are necessary to complete a task.
  • workload - In computing, a workload is typically any program or application that runs on a computer.
  • WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) - WYSIWYG (pronounced wiz-ee-wig) is a type of editing software that allows users to see and edit content in a form that appears as it would when displayed on an interface, webpage, slide presentation or printed document.
  • XML (Extensible Markup Language) - XML (Extensible Markup Language) is used to describe data.