Enterprise Technology Glossary

6,173 results · page 259 of 309

• Software

  Software is a collection of computer programs, procedures, and associated data that directs computing systems to perform defined tasks and services. In enterprise contexts, it underpins business processes, data management, security controls, and digital products across on-premises and cloud environments.

• Software-as-a-Service

  Software-as-a-Service is a cloud-based software delivery model in which a provider hosts, operates, and maintains applications and makes them available to customers over a network on a subscription basis, which affects enterprise architecture, procurement, security, and operations practices.

• Software Bill of Materials

  Software Bill of Materials is a structured, machine-readable inventory of components and dependencies in a software product, used by enterprises to support vulnerability assessment, license compliance, procurement requirements, and software supply chain risk management across development and operational environments.

• Software Composition Analysis

  Software composition analysis is an automated security and governance practice that inventories open-source and third-party components in software and evaluates their licenses and known vulnerabilities, enabling enterprises to manage software supply chain risk and support regulatory, contractual, and internal policy requirements.

• Software Containerization

  Software containerization is an operating system–level virtualization approach that packages applications and dependencies into isolated units. It matters in enterprises because it standardizes packaging and deployment across environments, supports microservices and DevOps practices, and enables consistent governance over distributed application workloads.

• Software-Defined Cloud Interconnect

  Software-defined cloud interconnect is a programmable networking model that uses software control and automation to establish, adjust, and monitor managed connections between enterprise networks, data centers, and multiple cloud providers, supporting hybrid and multicloud strategies and centralized operational control.

• Software-Defined Compute

  Software-defined compute is an approach to managing processing resources in which software abstracts and pools CPU, memory and related hardware, exposing programmable, policy-based compute services that support cloud, container, virtualization and hyperconverged architectures in enterprise and hybrid infrastructure environments.

• Software Defined Data Center

  Software-defined data center is a data center architecture in which compute, storage, and networking resources are virtualized and centrally managed by software, enabling policy-based automation, standardized provisioning, and integration with private and hybrid cloud operating models in enterprise environments.

• Software-Defined Fabric

  Software-defined fabric is a programmable network fabric controlled by centralized software that defines, automates, and manages switching and routing behavior across interconnected devices, supporting policy consistency, segmentation, and coordinated operations in enterprise data center, campus, and multicloud network environments.

• Software Defined Networking

  Software-defined networking (SDN) is a network architecture model that separates control and data planes, centralizing network policy and configuration in software controllers, which matters in enterprises for automation, consistent policy enforcement, observability, and integration with cloud, virtualization, and security architectures.

• Software-Defined Optical Network

  Software-defined optical network is an optical transport architecture that applies software-defined networking control and programmability to wavelengths and spectrum, enabling centralized software control, automated provisioning, and policy-based management of optical resources for carrier and large enterprise environments.

• Software-Defined Security

  Software-defined security is a software-based approach to defining, orchestrating, and enforcing security policies across virtualized, cloud, and software-defined infrastructures, enabling centralized, programmable control of access, inspection, and monitoring while decoupling security functions from dedicated hardware and manual device configurations.

• Software-Defined Storage

  Software-defined storage is a software-based approach to managing and delivering storage services independently from specific hardware, allowing enterprises to pool heterogeneous storage resources, apply centralized policies, and integrate programmable storage with virtualized, cloud, and containerized environments for consistent operations and governance.

• Software-Defined Supercomputing

  Software-defined supercomputing is an approach to high-performance computing that uses centralized software control planes to abstract and orchestrate supercomputer resources, enabling policy-based configuration, resource sharing, and governance of large-scale compute, network, and storage infrastructure in enterprise and research environments.

• Software-Defined Wide Area Network

  Software-defined wide area network is a software-controlled WAN architecture that centralizes policy and traffic management over multiple transport types, enabling enterprises to manage branch, data center, and cloud connectivity with consistent control, segmentation, and performance-focused routing at the WAN edge.

• Software Development Kit

  Software development kit is a packaged set of tools, libraries, and documentation that enables developers to build or integrate software with a specific platform, service, or device, which helps enterprises standardize integrations, reduce custom coding effort, and manage platform compatibility.

• Software & Dev Tools

  Software and development tools are the programs, utilities, and platforms that support the creation, testing, deployment, and maintenance of software systems in enterprises, providing standardized mechanisms for automation, policy enforcement, collaboration, traceability, and integration across the software development lifecycle.

• Software License Compliance

  Software license compliance is the practice of ensuring that an organization’s software use matches contractual license rights, helping reduce legal and financial exposure while supporting governance, audit readiness, cost control, and standardized management of software across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.

• Software Testing Lifecycle

  Software testing lifecycle is a structured process model that organizes software testing work into defined phases, used by enterprises to plan, design, execute, and close testing activities in alignment with development lifecycles, quality objectives, compliance requirements, and release management practices.

• Solana

  Solana is a public, open-source layer-1 blockchain that uses proof-of-stake and proof-of-history to provide a programmable transaction and settlement layer for decentralized applications and digital assets, relevant to enterprises evaluating public blockchain platforms for tokenization and on-chain execution.