The Most Baffling IT Terms Explained

HP came out with an explanation of what they consider the most baffling IT terms. Here are the top terms:

• VoIP (Voice over IP): A T-Mobile survey found that one in ten respondents thought VoIP can improve visibility for the visually impaired! It actually stands for Voice over Internet Protocol, and literally refers to the ability to transmit the voice over the Internet.

•   Petaflop: This is a word you'll probably see in conjunction with discussions of supercomputing. A petaflop can be expressed as a thousand trillion floating point operations per second; it is a measure of performance for the fastest computers in the world.

• ASP: This one is particularly tricky because it's an acronym with two meanings. An Active Server Page is an HTML page that includes one or more scripts (small embedded programs) that are processed on a Microsoft® Web server before the page is sent to the user. An Application Service Provider is a business that provides computer-based services to customers over a network.

• Kernel: This is the central component of most computer operating systems, responsible for managing the system's resources and the communication between hardware and software components.

•   Megahertz (MHz): This is unit of measurement used when determining a computer's processing speed. It literally means one million cycles per second. Accordingly, Gigahertz (GHz) and Terahertz (THz) equal one billion and one trillion cycles respectively.

• Deduplication: This is a method of reducing storage needs by eliminating redundant data from a device. Deduplication is also sometimes known as "intelligent compression" or "single-instance storage".

•   Robust: This is probably one of the most commonly used, yet least understood, terms in IT marketing materials. A "robust" product can be one that doesn't break or fail easily; for example, an operating system in which any individual application can fail without disturbing the operating system or other applications can be said to be robust. Robust is also sometimes used to mean a product or solutions designed with a full range of capabilities.

Source: http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enewsletter/cache/602541-0-0-225-121.html?jumpid=em_di_497654_US_US_4_013_hpe_us_779444_across-bg&dimid=1131245382&dicid=&mrm=1-4BVUP