Word of the Day: FedRAMP

Word of the Day
Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Program), a risk management program for outsourced information systems used by the United States government. Under FedRAMP, once a cloud service provider is authorized for one agency, other agencies can also use that service.
Overheard
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“Complying with the FedRAMP methodology and its security requirements can be a complex, expensive and demanding process for cloud providers.” — David Svec |
Related Terms
FedRAMP 3PAO
Federal Cloud Computing Initiative
GSA IT Schedule 70
Quiz Yourself
What is unsourcing?
a. transferring support functions from paid employees to unpaid online communities.
b. bringing services back to the location from which they were originally outsourced.
Answer
Related Reading
Will Amazon Web Services’ FedRAMP certification boost public cloud use? In this Ask The Expert, Forrester analyst Ed Ferrara discusses the potential impact of AWS’ FedRAMP certification. |
FedRAMP basics: Taking the mystery out of cloud security assessment Learn how FedRAMP makes cloud security assessments easier both for government entities and non-government enterprises. |
Selling government cloud services: FedRAMP vs. FISMA Even if a cloud provider isn’t selling government cloud services, it’s still important to understand FedRAMP and FISMA because the public sector influences commercial markets. |
Word of the Day: SWOT analysis

Word of the Day
Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is SWOT analysis, a framework for identifying and analyzing the internal and external factors that can have an impact on the viability of a project, product, place or person.
Overheard
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“[A SWOT analysis] challenges you to see beyond your company walls to determine what opportunities are open for your company and how to capitalize on your strengths.” — Darrell Zahorsky |
Related Terms
framework
decision tree
decision management
decision support system
data-driven decision management
Quiz Yourself
What international business standard requires financial institutions to maintain enough cash reserves to cover risks incurred by operations?
a. FISMA
b. Basel II
Answer
Related Reading
Tom Davenport on using analytics to influence business decision-makers Analytics guru Tom Davenport gives us a peek into his latest book, ‘Keeping Up with the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding and Using Analytics.’ |
MIT panelists: Big data calls for data-driven decision-making skills Companies will need to develop data-driven decision making skills, attendees were told at the 2013 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium. |
Using SharePoint 2013 to enhance enterprise decision making SharePoint 2013 collaboration features enable companies to make better decisions, says content management expert Scott Robinson. |
Word of the Day – Kyoto cooling

“Cooling is directly related to the amount of power drawn by all of the electrical equipment in the data center. Power consumption is based on the number of amps drawn by the equipment. The more amps produced, the more cooling is required.” — Bill Kleyman
Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is Kyoto cooling. Kyoto cooling, also called the Kyoto wheel, is an energy-efficient free cooling method for data centers developed in the Netherlands. Continue…
Word of the Day – integrated business planning (IBP)

“Ideally, companies should integrate their business planning across multiple departments within each line of business (which is hard to do) and across lines of business that must work together — which is even harder.” — Barry Wilderman
Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is integrated business planning (IBP), a strategy for connecting the planning functions of each department in an organization to align operations and strategy with the organization’s financial performance.
Word of the Day – application virtualization

“Unfortunately, some apps can’t or shouldn’t be virtualized. For instance, kernel-based device drivers won’t work with any of the application virtualization products on the market today. Adobe Acrobat, for example, which has a printer driver, can’t be virtualized. “— Bridget Botelho
Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is application virtualization, which separates the installation of an application from the client computer that is accessing it. There are two types of application virtualization: remote and streaming. Remote applications run on a server and end user devices view and interact with applications over a network by using a remote display protocol. With streaming applications, the virtualized application is actually executed on the end user’s computing device. When an application is requested, the required components are downloaded to the local computer on demand.
Word of the Day – shared nothing live migration

“Because shared-nothing live migrations take longer and put a larger strain on the network, they aren’t automated. Instead, most admins will start the process manually as part of a maintenance activity or other operational change.” — Alastair Cooke
Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is shared-nothing live migration, a feature of Microsoft Hyper-V 3.0 and VMware vSphere 5.1 that allows a virtual machine (VM) to be moved from one physical server with direct-attached storage to another physical server with direct-attached storage.
Word of the Day – WebOps

“While DevOps just handles deployment, WebOps goes further into managing the business activity of the application. It ensures proper infrastructure capacity for that process, automating systems software in general — including data base servers, CRM systems and ERP systems.” — Matt Heusser
Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is WebOps, a spinoff of DevOps, the blending of tasks performed by a company’s application development and systems operations teams.
Word of the Day – knowledge management

“Consider gamifying your knowledge management system. A badge that says this person is really knowledgeable about a product or process is one of the truly valuable badges in any company, and it gives status to your best employees and your best contributing customers.” — Denis Pombriant
Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is knowlege management. Knowledge management involves data mining and some method of operation to push information to users. A knowledge management plan involves a survey of corporate goals and a close examination of the tools, both traditional and technical, that are required for addressing the needs of the company. The challenge of selecting a knowledge management system is to purchase or build software that fits the context of the overall plan and encourages employees to use the system and share information.
Word of the Day – network attached storage (NAS)

“One of the main attractions of traditional NAS is its simplicity. The systems are easy to install, configure, manage and operate, especially in environments of modest scale.” — Carol Sliwa
Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is network-attached storage (NAS), a dedicated hard disk storage device that is set up with its own network address and provides file-based data storage services to other devices on the network.
Word of the Day – social media listening

“Social media listening has, by many measures, replaced focus groups and phone surveys. But those old-school approaches still have a role to play, according to marketers and industry observers.” — Sue Hildreth
Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is social media listening, the the process of identifying and assessing what is being said about a company, individual, product or brand on the Internet. Sue Hildreth says that both social media and person-to-person information-gathering have value, but social media listening is quickly becoming the primary customer intelligence tool.
In the article referenced above in her quote, she points out several ways to use social media to get consumer insight, including online customer support forums, monitoring tools to gather comments from social outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, and crowdsourcing software that enables customers to suggest new product features and vote on their favorites.