Glossary

AI (Artificial Insemination) A technique for getting cows pregnant without bulls.

 

AI (Artificial Intelligence) The science of getting computers to act “smart,” to play chess, recognize language, drive cars, and so on.

 

all-hands meeting A meeting to which everyone is invited—everyone in a department, or even everyone in the company.

 

angel A wealthy individual who invests in start-ups. Angels often made their money from a successful start-up of their own.

 

Apache Software that lets a computer act as a Web server.

 

Auspex A competitor to NetApp that was founded in 1987 and went bankrupt in 2003.

 

backups Copies of data made in case something bad happens to the original. If you value your data, you should back it up at least once a week.

 

benchmark A performance test. There are benchmarks to test many aspects of computer performance.

 

beta testers Customers who try out a product before it is completely finished. When the beta testers are satisfied, then it is time to sell to real customers.

 

Board of Directors A group of people who oversee a company and its CEO.

 

business plan A document describing how a company plans to make money and grow. Start-ups write business plans to raise money from angels and VCs.

 

CEO (chief executive officer) The top boss in a company. Only the Board of Directors is above the CEO.

 

CFO (chief financial officer) The head of the finance department, responsible for budgets, spending, figuring out how much money the company is making, and so on.

 

chairman of the board The person in charge of the Board of Directors.

 

CIO (chief information officer) The head of the IT department, responsible for all information technology in a company.

 

COO (chief operating officer) One of the top two or three people in a company, reporting to the CEO. The roles played by COOs and presidents are highly variable, depending on the skills of the top people. See also president.

 

CTO (chief technology officer) The person responsible for guiding a company’s technology strategy.

 

customer support department The group in a company that helps customers who have problems.

 

data center A big room or building designed especially to hold computing equipment. See also enterprise data center.

 

database A collection of organized data, like a list of customers, their credit card numbers, phone numbers, what they have bought, and so on. Also, the application used to create and manage this organized data.

 

direct sales A sales model where a company sells products directly to customers. When you buy corn at the farmers’ market from the family that grew it, that’s direct sales; when you buy corn at the grocery store, that’s indirect sales.

 

EMC NetApp’s main competitor, still several times our size. The initials came from the three founders’ names.

 

engineering department The group in a company that designs and implements its products.

 

enterprise customer A very large customer, typically with thousands of employees and offices around the world. Enterprise customers have lots of money, but can be demanding and difficult to satisfy.

 

enterprise data center A large data center designed to meet the needs of enterprise customers. Serious ones have twenty-four-hour staffs, security like a bank vault, and—in case of power failure—enough diesel generators to power a medium-sized town.

 

Ethernet Most networks you can think of at work and at home are Ethernet. If you plug a wire into your PC to get access to the Internet, that’s probably Ethernet.

 

file server A system that lets users share files over a network, instead of storing them on a disk drive inside their computer.

 

Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 Lists produced by Fortune magazine of the top 500 (or 1,000) companies in the United States, ranked by revenue.

 

FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) A sales tactic that large companies use against small companies: “Don’t buy from them; they might go bankrupt.”

 

going public The process of converting from a private company owned by a small handful of people to a public company whose shares can be purchased by anyone. Also known as the IPO.

 

human resources (HR) department The group in a company that focuses on people-related issues: recruiting, hiring, firing, payroll, benefits, and so on.

 

IPO (initial public offering) See going public.

 

indirect sales A sales model that involves a middleman, like a reseller. See direct sales.

 

institutional investor A company that invests large amounts of money, like a pension fund or a mutual fund.

 

investment bank A bank that specializes in helping private companies go public, among other things.

 

IT (information technology) Computing hardware and software, including laptops, PCs, large computers, the applications they run, and the networks that connect them.

 

IT department (information technology department) The group in a company responsible for information technology, running payroll systems, billing systems, accounting systems, and so on.

 

Linux An operating system that competes with Windows and UNIX.

 

magic See pixie dust.

 

mainframe A very large computer used in enterprise data centers. Companies are increasingly using smaller computers running UNIX, Windows, and Linux instead of mainframes.

 

marketing department The group in a company responsible for identifying customers, doing advertising and promotions to get noticed by them, developing partnerships, presentations, Web sites, and anything else that helps to sell the company’s products more effectively.

 

mission critical Something that absolutely must keep working 100 percent of the time. The systems a company uses to deliver services to its customers are mission critical. The phone company’s 911 service is mission critical.

 

monetize eyeballs To somehow make money by having a Web site that many people visit. In the dot-com boom, many Web start-ups measured their worth by how many people viewed their site (eyeballs); they figured this must be valuable, even though they had no idea how to make money from it.

 

MO (management orgasm) Steve Kleiman’s term for the feeling that a manager gets after solving a really hard managerial problem.

 

network storage Storage that is out on a network, instead of on a disk drive in your computer. See NAS and SAN.

 

NAS (network-attached storage) A type of network storage that competes with SAN. NAS and SAN are a classic case of low-end versus high-end. Initially, SAN was faster and more reliable, but also much more expensive. Over time, NAS improved to the point where it is now a credible alternative to SAN for most applications.

 

network protocol The description of how two computers communicate over the network. For instance, the HTTP protocol lets one system see Web pages stored on another; NFS lets computers share files.

 

NFS (network file system) A network protocol that lets UNIX computers store data over the network; a type of NAS.

 

offsite A meeting held away from a company’s offices, to avoid the interruptions and distractions that are inevitable when people are in their usual workplace.

 

operating system The software that controls a computer. Windows, Mac OS, UNIX, and Linux are all operating systems.

 

pixie dust The almost magical ability that some leaders have to solve problems and to inspire people to work with amazing productivity.

 

president One of the top two or three people in a company, reporting to the CEO. See also COO.

 

price-to-earnings ratio A measure of how expensive a company’s stock is. Ten to thirty is common—maybe fifty or even a hundred for a high-growth company. Beyond that is crazy expensive.

 

professional services department The group in a company that provides for-fee services to the company’s customers.

 

RAID Absolutely wonderful technology that our nontechnical customers don’t really want to hear about.

 

recursion See recursion.

 

reseller A company that sells products made by other companies. A grocery store is a reseller. See direct sales and indirect sales.

 

response time How long it takes to do something. For a bakery, response time is how long it takes to bake one cake. If you know their response time, you still can’t tell how many cakes they can bake in a day: they might have lots of ovens. See throughput.

 

router A piece of equipment that connects networks together. Cisco is the leading vendor of routers.

 

sales department The group in a company that sells its products.

 

SAN (storage area network) A type of network storage that competes with NAS. See NAS.

 

SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) A federal law enforcement agency responsible for overseeing public companies.

 

Snapshots Absolutely wonderful technology that our nontechnical customers don’t really want to hear about.

 

start-up A small young company that has not gone public.

 

sysadmin (system administrator) A person in the IT department who manages computers, networks, and applications.

 

terabyte Enough storage to hold about two million copies of this book; the total amount of storage in five or ten laptop computers. Technically speaking, it’s one trillion (a million million) characters.

 

throughput How many of something you can do in an hour (or however long). See response time.

 

TO (technical orgasm) Steve Kleiman’s term for the feeling that an engineer gets after solving a really hard technical problem.

 

UNIX An operating system that competes with Windows and Linux. UNIX often runs on big computers in data centers.

 

VC (venture capital) Investments made in small private companies. VC firms are similar to mutual funds, except that mutual funds invest in public companies.

 

WAFL Absolutely wonderful technology that our nontechnical customers don’t really want to hear about.

 

Windows An operating system from Microsoft that competes with UNIX, Linux, and Mac OS.

 

workstation Like a desktop PC, except faster and more powerful. People sometimes use workstation to mean a desktop computer that runs UNIX instead of Windows.