Jargon Buster
Jargon Buster
| AP | An access point is a device which will connect you to your wireless services. For example, in a building there will be a number of access points (for coverage) that when you run through the building you will connect to, allowing you to seamlessly roam without losing connectivity. |
| BCDR | BCDR is a Business Continuity Disaster Recovery. This is software in the cloud (often via a third party) or a local hardware device that will backup all of your data locally or to the cloud and data centres so that it can be recovered in the event of an incident that causes you to lose data. |
| Broadband | Broadband encompasses a number of different technologies to connect you to the internet like fibre or copper. |
| CCaaS | CCaaS is a contact centre as a service that doesn’t contain physical hardware or servers and instead is software that provides a feature rich consumable per user per month service managed and owned by a vendor or service provider, from their infrastructure via the public internet. |
| Chatbot | A chatbot is the same as web chat and is often a customer’s first point of contact when they’re on a website. In most cases, the first few questions are not operator generated, they are generated by AI technology, or by the technology that the Chatbot was programmed in. It will then either run through a pre-selected list of defined responses, or it will gather information and then pass that to a real agent who is then able to be brought into the conversation to continue the conversation |
| CLI | CLI is a Command Line interface that understands the code that you are typing in in order for the computer to perform tasks. More modern approaches do not use a CLI. They have GUIs (graphical user interfaces). |
| Cloud-based | An application or service, which is effectively being run from a service provider that you would connect to directly over the internet. It doesn’t sit in your infrastructure and is managed elsewhere. |
| Collaboration | The use of multiple online methods to communicate with someone, for example, voice calls, video calls or instant messaging, as well as file sharing – normally all within a single application with multiple functions and is built around communicating. |
| Contact Centre | Where a number of users or agents provide customers with a service or application in order to meet their requirements. It’s called a contact centre because there are multiple ways of contacting agents, like via voice, email, video, web chat and even social media. |
| Data Centre | A location that typically houses a lot of infrastructure like servers, storage, routers and switches to provide applications and services that are used by either your business or multiple people’s business. It houses technology in order to run applications or services. |
| DHCP | Dynamic Host Control Protocol is a method of providing you with the means for your computer (smart phone, tablet, fridge, etc) to communicate to devices on a network by allocating IP addresses within predefined ranges. |
| Digital Transformation | Digital Transformation is the migration of technology from older legacy services and applications to more modern variations. For example, upgrading analogue telephony to ISDN lines and ISDN lines to SIP trunks. Digital Transformation can encompass an entire programme of changes to the benefit of a business. |
| Direct Routing | A Microsoft team’s term for voice enabling your Microsoft team’s application. It is the process of connecting your Microsoft team’s tenant to a phone system or service provider. So it will allow you to make telephone calls through that application. |
| DNS | Domain Name System. DNS translates an IP address into a name. For example, the IP Address of Google is 95.10.10.10, so when someone types in www.google.com – the name gets translated into the IP address. |
| Ethernet / Fibre | Ethernet or fibre are our ways of connecting your home, your office or your data centre to the internet. It’s essentially the digital transformation for service providers. |
| Gamification | Predominantly contact centre terminology for essentially, creating contests or games, out-of-work tasks. So a good example of this would be a sales challenge, where in order to reward salespeople, we create a contest. For example, the person who reaches 100 sales within a day is rewarded for that purpose and is given some kind of gift or reward for doing so. |
| GUI | GUI or Graphical User Interface is how a user will see an application that they can use. An example of a graphical user interface is Microsoft Windows. It’s in a pictorial format or graphical format, rather than having lots of code. So when you press a button, you’re pressing a graphic or an icon, what it does behind the scenes, is then perform some code. And that code then either performs a task or does something. But ultimately, all you’re doing is you’re pressing something like a button. So for example, if you go on to Google Chrome, which is a web browser or a web graphical user interface, you would click on the Google Chrome icon, and that would then launch the application in the background. |
| Hosted | Hosted means that it’s being run by someone else and in most cases that is a service provider, for example, Amazon Web Services or Microsoft are hosting services or applications on your behalf. |
| Hybrid Work | Hybrid work allows employees to work from anywhere. From home, the office, a coffee shop, or on the train, you’re essentially able to do your job from anywhere with the same applications and services. |
| IP Address | An IP address is an address that a computer uses in order to access different services on the network and on the internet. It is a unique identifier that your device will have and it means that if you send a request for something, it knows how to get back to you because it can route to your specific destination. It’s a little bit like someone’s home address. If you drive somewhere and then want to make a return journey home, it’s exactly the same way a computer sends requests out and knows how to return. |
| IPv6 | Internet Protocol, version six. Is the next generation of IP addresses. There are a finite number of IP addresses under the current scheme (IPv4) and almost all of these have now been allocated.IPv6 expands the possible numbers available to be used. |
| ISDN Switch Off | From 2025, BT is committed to turning off ISDN exchanges and moving businesses to run over IP. Changing copper and analogues methods over to fibre and ethernet. ISDN is in the main how most telephone calls were placed probably from around the 1960s through to the 1990s. So it’s pushing your telephone call over a piece of copper that’s in the ground, from 2025 this will all be done over IP. |
| LAN | Local Area Network. A network, normally within a building or an office space, connects your devices together. So it will connect your PC to your printer to a local server and things that reside within a geographical boundary, most likely a building. |
| MPLS | MPLS or multi-protocol, label switching is a service provider terminology which is used for connecting and securing business traffic over a Service Providers Network. It’s a protocol that allows for multiple businesses and multiple types of traffic. It tags each packet and ensures that that packet is only allowed to go from certain destinations to other destinations that have those labels within it. That transmits and secures your traffic between various different sites. So in the example of having MPLS with BT, because BT has hundreds or 1000s of nodes up and down the country, they could choose any path between those nodes to get your traffic from point A to point B, but it will only allow that traffic securely to your sites. So it routes multiple types of traffic and multiple people’s traffic over its fixed networks up and down the country and globally. |
| MSP | MSP is a managed service provider. This is where someone is providing multiple services for you. For example, an MSP may provide you with an email, security services, networking services or telephony services to a customer or to a group of customers, and by managing multiple customers, they are essentially a service provider network |
| Network | A network is a collection of computers or devices that are able to communicate with each other. The internet is often defined as a network of networks. |
| Omni-Channel | Omni-Channel is a contact centre terminology that explains multiple ways of contacting or communicating with a customer services organisation. It allows people to email,, instant message, web chat, or call (possibly even Fax!). And provides the capability to manage all of those interactions in a similar way. So they can queue a web chat alongside an email alongside a voice call, and be able to manage and report on those different interactions from the same platform. |
| PBX |
PBX is a private branch exchange. It’s a legacy phone system and typically it is a box within a communications room or a data centre within someone’s office, and phone lines would be plugged into one end, and then at the other end, you would have a phone on the end of it. When a phone call comes in, into the private branch exchange, that would then have the knowledge to differentiate between the different extensions on the system or to queue calls, or play announcements, and then reach your desired destination. |
| Ping |
A Ping is effectively A response and reply protocol used to determine reachability. If you have an IP address, and you’re trying to reach another IP address you can type in a command to test that it’s possible to route to it. It can provide good information about the speed of the response and speed of the network, essentially ping helps you to find out if you can route to a certain device. |
| PSTN | PSTN is the public switched telephone network that runs predominately throughout the entire country. So for the United Kingdom, that would in the main be British Telecom. They handle all of the area codes and phone numbers. It’s a connection of all of the exchanges that allows you to dial a specific number and it knows where that is in the country and its routes. |
| Router | A router allows you to route traffic from your current network to another network. |
| SaaS | Software as a Service is a consumption model. So for example, a very popular software as a service is Microsoft Office 365. And people consume this on a per user per month basis or a per user per annual basis. So it’s consuming software. And the software is being run as a service from a service provider such as Microsoft, Google, Cisco etc. |
| SD-WAN | SD Wan is a Software Defined Wide Area Network. It allows customers to install certain devices, or bits of software that are able to route traffic for a specific network, but over the internet. Bypassing the need to pay a service provider for routing capabilities and management and instead allows the user to overlay technology on top of the internet essentially creating a VPN for the business. |
| Server | A server is a computing resource that runs an operating system that allows you to install and run various services and applications. This is typically housed within a plain metal box and put into a data centre, where it is then connected to the Internet, a network, an MPLS, or an SD Wan that can communicate between different sites. |
| Single pane of glass | Terminology that defines how you manage and report on a number of services from a single place. For example, Cisco Meraki provides a single pane of glass dashboard that allows you to manage your switching, security, your wireless, your networking, and your CCTV all from a single central application, as well as monitor and report on everything from one place. Numerous vendors offer this. |
| SIP | Session Initiation Protocol is a signalling protocol that allows effective communication sessions between devices. In the main, SIP is used for the transportation of voice packets where the SIP protocol communicates and ensures that the communication path is clear and capable. |
| SSH/Telnet | This is a management protocol that allows you to manage items like routers and switches. It provides an interface that you can then use to input the command line. Telnet is a non-secure method of accessing the interface whereas SSH is a secure method of accessing it. |
| Subnet | A way of dividing groups of IP addresses together for various connection, security and network reasons. |
| Switching | A switch is a physical box that has a computing backplane that allows you to switch from one port to another port to allow communications.You can have a PC plugged into port one, a server plugged into port 2 and easily communicate and send your data between those two ports. |
| UC&C | UC&C stands for Unified Communications and Collaboration. It’s the amalgamation, of voice, video, instant messaging, and file sharing as an industry standard, rather than as an application. |
| UCaaS | Unified Comms as a Service. It’s a service that you consume to provide your telephony and application needs. You consume it on a per user per month or per user per year basis and run by a service provider, vendor, or MSP. |
| Vendor-neutral | Vendor neutral is a stance taken by a number of systems integrators such as Amtech, where we don’t try to shoehorn people to one specific vendor, or product. Instead, we have a number of different vendors and technology stacks and under each technology stack a number of different options for a customer, which means that the customer receives a choice that is based on their requirements and what they need, rather than being offered restrictions due to partnerships or preferences. |
| Virtual Machine | A virtual machine is an emulation of a computing system. Based on computer architecture, this then provides the functionality of a physical computer. In many cases, it is possible to run multiple virtual machines on a computer or server which has lots of processing power and is able to allocate or share resources to run these devices. |
| VoIP | Voice over IP is a method and grouping of technologies to run voice, video and media over an IP network.. The IP element means that your voice-over IP device will have an IP address and then use the computer and the networking in order to route it to a destination. It is essentially the digitisation of voice and is helping to move us away from old legacy telephone systems. |
| VPN | VPN is a virtual private network that creates a secure connection between a number of devices, resources or services and is for use by those users. |
| WAN – Wide Area Network | A wide area network is a geographically diverse system of connecting networks together. It is typically over a distance nationally or internationally and connects your office(s) or your business(es) together allowing them to communicate. |
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