Glossary

Welcome to the Glossary! Whether you're already familiar with some of these terms or you're just becoming acquainted, our top-level glossary is a great resource for learning all of the relevant goods. Scroll through the full list below, search by term, or select by individual letter.
SHOW ALL A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

IaaS

Short for “Infrastructure as a Service.” IaaS is a form of cloud computing that provides virtual computing resources such as storage, networking, and other capabilities over the internet.

IAB

Stands for the Internet Architecture Board. It is the internet society that oversees the technical evolution of the internet. It also supervises the IETF and the IRTF.

IBM i

An operating system that runs on the IBM Power Systems and IBM PureSystems.  

IBM MQ

This is an IBM standard and MOM product for messaging. It uses messages and queues to support the exchange of information between applications, systems, services, and files. It was previously known as Websphere MQ. 

ICAP

Short for the Internet Content Adaption Protocol. It is a lightweight protocol that provides simple object-based content vectoring for HTTP services.

IETF

Stands for the Internet Engineering Task Force. It is an open standards organization that develops and promotes voluntary internet standards, in particular the standards that comprise the internet protocol suite. 

IMAP

Stands for the Internet Message Access Protocol. It is an internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection.  

Informix

A product family within IBM’s Information Management division. It is a fast and flexible database with the ability to seamlessly integrate SQL, NoSQL/JSON, plus time series and spatial data.

IOS

Short for the International Organization for Standardization. This is an international standard-setting organization composed of representatives from various national standards organizations.

IoT

The IoT, or Internet of Things, is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechancial and digital machines, objects, animals, or people that are provided with unique identifiers (UIDs) and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.

IP

Short for Internet Protocol. IP is the principal communications protocol in the internet for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the internet.

iPaaS

“Integration Platform as a Service.” iPaaS is a platform or suite that connects any combination of cloud-based or on-premise applications, processes, services, and/or systems within individual or across multiple organizations. It connects otherwise disjointed systems to deliver a unified solution.

IRTF

Stands for the Internet Research Task Force. It is composed of a number of focused and long-term research groups that work on topics related to internet protocols, applications, architecture, and technology.

IT

Short for Information Technology. It is the application of computers to store, retrieve, transmit and manipulate data, often in the context of a business or other enterprise.