Glossary
An IT glossary for executives.
The infrastructure, managed services, security, and data and AI terms that appear in proposals and RFPs, explained in one line.
Updated: October 12, 2026 · By N.Technology
- AIOps
- The use of artificial intelligence in IT operations to correlate alerts and identify root cause; most platforms leave the fix to a person.
- Autonomous IT operations
- Operations in which a platform such as AITops® detects, diagnoses, fixes, verifies and learns from incidents under rules approved by people.
- Colocation
- Hosting your own equipment in a third-party data center that provides space, power, cooling, security and connectivity.
- CSIRT
- Computer security incident response team that contains incidents, investigates them with forensic analysis and documents them.
- Data lake
- A repository that stores data of any type in its original form for analytics and artificial intelligence.
- Data warehouse
- A repository of structured, cleansed data designed for reporting and analytics.
- Private AI
- Artificial intelligence models that run on infrastructure controlled by the organization, without sending data to public services.
- IT systems integrator
- A company that designs, supplies and integrates technology from multiple vendors into a complete solution.
- ITOM
- IT operations management: monitoring, observability and event management for infrastructure and applications.
- ITSM
- IT service management: incidents, requests, problems, changes and service levels, usually through an IT service desk.
- Help desk / service desk
- The single point of contact between users and IT for reporting incidents and requesting services.
- MSP
- Managed service provider: operates and supports an organization's technology for a recurring fee.
- L0, L1, L2, L3
- Support levels: L0 self-service and automation, L1 first response, L2 technical resolution and L3 specialists.
- NOC
- Network operations center that monitors the availability and performance of IT infrastructure.
- Private cloud
- A cloud dedicated to a single organization, in its own data center or in colocation. For the public sector, a private cloud in-country meets the definition of sovereign cloud.
- Sovereign cloud
- An approach in which information and systems remain within national borders and under the institution's control.
- SLA
- Service level agreement: measurable commitments for availability, response and resolution.
- SOC
- Security operations center that continuously monitors security to detect and respond to threats.