Glossary
The words that come up when the stack stops working.
35 definitions, written plainly. Where a term is commonly misused or a claim is commonly overstated, these say so rather than taking the flattering reading.
Agent orchestration
Agent orchestration is the coordination of multiple AI agents working on parts of a larger task, including how work is divided and h…
AI agent
An AI agent is a program that pursues a goal over multiple steps, choosing its own actions along the way, rather than answering one…
AI chief of staff
An AI chief of staff is a system that reads across a company’s whole operational record, rather than one function, and acts on what…
Approval gate
An approval gate is a checkpoint where an automated process pauses and waits for a human decision before committing a change.
Audit log
An audit log is an append-only record of who did what and when, kept so that actions can be reconstructed after the fact.
Bundled pricing
Bundled pricing charges one price for a set of capabilities and a number of included seats, rather than pricing each product and eac…
Churn signal
A churn signal is an observable behaviour that predicts a customer is likely to leave, before they say so.
Customer health score
A customer health score is a single number summarising how likely an account is to renew, derived from their recent behaviour.
Data migration
Data migration is the process of moving records from one system into another, mapping each field in the source onto a field in the d…
Data processing agreement (DPA)
A data processing agreement is a contract setting out how a supplier may process personal data on a customer’s behalf.
Data residency
Data residency is the requirement that data be stored and processed in a specified country or region.
Data silo
A data silo is a store of information held inside one team or tool in a way that other parts of the business cannot readily use.
Field mapping
Field mapping is the step in a migration where each field in the old system is matched to the field in the new one that will hold it…
GDPR
GDPR is the European Union regulation governing how personal data about people in the EU may be collected, stored and used.
ISO 27001
ISO 27001 is an international standard for information security management systems, against which an organisation can be certified b…
Model Context Protocol (MCP)
The Model Context Protocol is an open standard that lets AI models call external tools and read external data through a common inter…
MRR
MRR, or monthly recurring revenue, is the predictable subscription revenue a business earns each month, normalised to a monthly figu…
Net revenue retention
Net revenue retention is the percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers over a period, including expansion and…
Onboarding fee
An onboarding fee is a one-off charge some software vendors require in year one to configure the product and migrate data, billed se…
Operational intelligence
Operational intelligence is the ability to read signals across every part of a business at once and act on the pattern they form tog…
Per-seat pricing
Per-seat pricing charges a fixed amount for each person with a login, so the bill scales with headcount rather than with usage or va…
Role-based access control (RBAC)
Role-based access control grants permissions to roles rather than to individuals, so a person’s access is determined by the role the…
SaaS sprawl cost
SaaS sprawl cost is the total annual cost of a company’s software stack, including per-seat scaling, seat minimums and one-off onboa…
SAML
SAML is an open standard that lets an identity provider tell an application that a user has been authenticated, without the applicat…
Schema
A schema is the defined structure of a database: what kinds of records exist, what fields each has, and how they relate to each othe…
SCIM
SCIM is a standard for automatically creating, updating and deactivating user accounts in an application from a central directory.
Seat
A seat is one person with a login to a system.
Single sign-on (SSO)
Single sign-on lets people access multiple systems with one set of credentials, managed centrally by their employer’s identity provi…
Single source of truth
A single source of truth is an arrangement where each fact is stored in exactly one place, so there is no possibility of two systems…
SOC 2
SOC 2 is an audit report on how a service organisation manages security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and pri…
Stack consolidation
Stack consolidation is replacing several separate software tools with one system that covers the same ground.
Sub-processor
A sub-processor is a third party that a supplier uses to process personal data on its customers’ behalf.
System of record
A system of record is the authoritative store for a given kind of data, the one that is believed when two systems disagree.
Tool sprawl
Tool sprawl is the accumulation of separate software tools that each hold part of a company’s data, with no single place where all o…
Total cost of ownership
Total cost of ownership is the full cost of running a system over its life, including licences, implementation, integration, adminis…