Terminology

• Use-Model:  Use-model is an encompassing term that describes how compute infrastructure resources are organized to serve the needs of the organization.  It captures the underlying computation philosophy of the organization.  It further describes how humans access compute resources.  While a critical component of compute infrastructure is implementation, many companies do not have cohesive strategies.  The general paradigm in most businesses is ad-hoc use-models.  Many ad-hoc use-models exist because of rapid innovations in software and hardware.  Ad-hoc use-models are responsible for significant productivity losses in the majority of projects GRIDBYTE™ participates in.
• SMB: Small/Medium Business: Usually a company of less than 200 people.
• The Director’s Mind™
• Virtual Technology Boardroom™
• Virtualize (virtualization): Software technology that encapsulates other operating systems and/or computing environments.  This powerful trend provides a flexible way for companies to extend computing in different directions without incurring higher costs associated with new hardware procurement.
• Thin Client: A reduced functionality computing device that provides a display and input terminal for the end-user.  These devices typically contain no hard disks.  They rely on powerful services for computation.  Thin clients offer super-scalar efficiencies for most networks because of reduced deployment and maintenance costs combined with lower failure rates.
• Open Source: Open Source means that the underlying art that constitutes a project is available to everyone.  In the context of software, this means that the source code is generally available to everyone for individual or commercial use.
• Compute Infrastructure: The sum of all compute servers, fileservers, workstations, networks, switches, LAN/WAN topologies, use-model, operating systems and software.
• HPC: High Performance Computing.