Click through to read the IT jargon that bugs you most and at the end submit your own.
“I always like it when I realize I have had a conversation that was 90% acronyms,” says James Zeller, senior network manager for law firm Chaffe McCall in New Orleans. “We need to look at our DR/BC plan to determine the RTO and RPO and then run that by the CEO and CIO. Then, see if we need to continue backup to AIT or DDS or use NAS, factoring in the WAN versus the LAN and the VPN.” | |
“I’m not even sure of why I don’t like ‘touching base,’ but most of the time I hear it, it’s not to get re-acquainted or check in, but instead a sales call,” says Tom Gonzales, senior network administrator for the Colorado State Employees Credit Union in Denver. Another term that bugs Gonzales is ‘make sure we’re on the same page.’ “No… you want to make sure I’m on your page,” says Gonzales. “I usually respond with ‘I’m a very fast reader and I think I may have left you behind.’ Most of these sayings seem to be a way to indicate a level of ‘insider-ness,’ as well as a way of making the person that says them feel better about themselves.” | |
 | “Unique, first of its kind, leading provider of, infinitely scalable, aligning business with IT, revolutionary, breakthrough and any use of the word leverage,” says Don Jennings, a PR professional with Lois Paul and Partners in Boston, who chimed in with some of his favorite jargon that vendors should never use in a press release. |
 | “Although I am guilty of using it myself, I hate ‘easy-to-use’,” says David Hill, senior analyst for the Mesabi Group. “No one is in favor of ‘hard-to-use, but the phrase ‘easy-to-use’ is too vague, too easily misused and too meaningless.” |
“How about ITIL, the ISO 9000 of IT, where you pay a great deal for consulting and ‘certification’ with only promises as to the outcome,” says Randy Kerns, CTO for ProStor Systems in Boulder, Colorado. | |
“Price performer, ten clicks or less, the fastest, open source, software as a service, ILM and SOA,” says Greg Schulz, senior analyst for Storage IO. “The meaning of SOA depends on the context of where and how it is being used or of a particular vendor’s pitch and definition.” | |
