IT Glossary
Key Terms To Know In The IT Industry

Technical Writer

Produces documentation that helps users understand and effectively use product or system capabilities.

You will find this term commonly used in Documentation, Communication

Technology Stack

The set of technologies an organization uses to build a web or mobile application. It includes the programming languages, frameworks, database management systems, and tools that developers use to create the application.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development, Web Development

Telematics

The branch of information technology that deals with the long-distance transmission of computerized information. It is often used in the context of automotive technologies like GPS navigation and automated driving systems.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, Automotive Technology

Telemetry

An automated communications process by which measurements and other data are collected at remote or inaccessible points and transmitted to receiving equipment for monitoring.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, General IT

Telemetry Data

Data that is collected remotely and automatically sent back to receiving equipment for monitoring. Telemetry data is widely used in IT for monitoring network performance, application performance, and system health.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, Performance Monitoring

Telnet

A network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking

Template

In software development, a template is a generic class or other unit of source code that can be used as the basis for unique units of code. It supports the reuse of software architecture.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development

Temporal Database

A database that manages time-sensitive data. It records not only the current state of data like conventional databases but also historical data, allowing for queries over time.

You will find this term commonly used in Databases

TensorFlow

An open-source software library for dataflow and differentiable programming across a range of tasks. It is a symbolic math library, and is also used for machine learning applications such as neural networks.

You will find this term commonly used in AI, Machine Learning

TensorFlow Lite

A lightweight version of Google's TensorFlow open-source library for machine learning, designed for mobile and edge devices. It enables on-device machine learning inference with low latency and a small binary size.

You will find this term commonly used in AI, Machine Learning

Terabyte (TB)

A unit of digital information storage equal to approximately one trillion bytes or 2^40 bytes. Terabytes are commonly used to measure storage capacity in devices like hard drives and solid-state drives.

You will find this term commonly used in General IT

Teraflops

A unit of computing speed equal to one trillion floating point operations per second. It's often used to measure the computational power of supercomputers and high-performance computing systems.

You will find this term commonly used in General IT, High-Performance Computing

Ternary Operator

A conditional operator in programming that takes three arguments. The first argument is a comparison argument; the second and third arguments are the outcomes, depending on the result of the comparison.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development

Ternary Search

An algorithm that divides the search space into three parts and finds the desired index or position of a key value.

You will find this term commonly used in Algorithms

Ternary Search Tree

A type of trie (prefix tree) where nodes are arranged in a manner that allows for efficient searches, insertions, and deletions of strings.

You will find this term commonly used in Data Structures

Terraform

An open-source infrastructure as code software tool that provides a consistent CLI workflow to manage hundreds of cloud services. Terraform codifies cloud APIs into declarative configuration files.

You will find this term commonly used in Cloud Computing

Terraform Cloud

A cloud service by HashiCorp that provides teams with a shared space to collaboratively manage Terraform configurations, workspaces, variables, and state files.

You will find this term commonly used in Cloud Computing

Terraform Enterprise

An on-premises distribution of Terraform, designed for use by large enterprises. It adds collaboration and governance features to the open-source Terraform tool, enabling teams to safely and efficiently manage their infrastructure as code.

You will find this term commonly used in Cloud Computing, Infrastructure as Code

Terraform Provider

In Terraform, a provider is a plugin that allows Terraform to interact with cloud providers, SaaS providers, and other APIs to manage external resources as part of its infrastructure as code approach.

You will find this term commonly used in Cloud Computing

Test Automation

The use of software to control the execution of tests, the comparison of actual outcomes to predicted outcomes, the setting up of test preconditions, and other test control and test reporting functions.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development, QA

Test Fixture

A fixed state of a set of objects used as a baseline for running tests in software development. The purpose of a test fixture is to ensure that there is a well-known and fixed environment in which tests are run so that results are repeatable.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development, QA

Tethering

The practice of using a mobile device as a mobile hotspot. When tethering is enabled, the device shares its internet connection with other devices connected to it via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or USB.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, Mobile Computing

Text Encoding

The process of converting text into a sequence of bytes. Encoding schemes such as ASCII, UTF-8, and UTF-16 are used to represent character sets in computers.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development, General IT

Text Mining

The process of deriving high-quality information from text. It involves the discovery by computer of new, previously unknown information, by automatically extracting information from different written resources.

You will find this term commonly used in AI, Machine Learning

Text-to-Speech (TTS)

A form of speech synthesis that converts text into spoken voice output. TTS systems are used in various applications, including assistive technologies for the visually impaired, navigation systems, and more.

You will find this term commonly used in AI, Accessibility

TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol)

A simple, lockstep, File Transfer Protocol which allows a client to get a file from or put a file onto a remote host. One of its primary uses is in the early stages of nodes booting from a local area network.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking

Thermal Design Power (TDP)

The maximum amount of heat generated by a computer chip or component (such as a CPU, GPU, or system on a chip) that the cooling system in a computer is designed to dissipate under any workload.

You will find this term commonly used in Hardware, Computing

Thin Client

A lightweight computer that is purpose-built for remote access to a server (typically cloud or desktop virtualization environments). It depends heavily on another computer to fulfill its computational roles.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, Cloud Computing

Thin Film Transistor (TFT)

A type of technology used in displays, including LCDs, where each pixel is controlled by one to four transistors. It's known for high image quality and is used in a wide range of devices, from monitors and TVs to mobile phones and tablets.

You will find this term commonly used in Hardware, Displays

Thin Provisioning

A method of optimizing the efficiency of available space in storage area networks and virtual environments by allocating disk storage space in a flexible manner among multiple users.

You will find this term commonly used in Storage, Virtualization

Thread

The smallest sequence of programmed instructions that can be managed independently by a scheduler. In the context of programming, it refers to the execution of concurrent operations within a single process.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development

Thread (in IoT)

A low-power, wireless networking protocol designed specifically for home automation. It is based on IPv6 and enables devices to connect directly to the internet, facilitating device-to-device and device-to-cloud communication in the Internet of Things.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, IoT

Thread Pool

A pool of threads that can be reused for executing tasks, which is more efficient than creating and destroying threads for each task.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development

Threading

The process of allowing a program to run multiple operations concurrently in the same process space.

You will find this term commonly used in Programming/Software Development

Threat

Any potential danger to computer systems, networks, or data that could exploit vulnerabilities and cause harm.

You will find this term commonly used in Cybersecurity

Threat Intelligence

Threat intelligence is information collected, analyzed, and disseminated about potential or current cyber threats, attackers, vulnerabilities, and attack techniques, enabling organizations to proactively defend against security threats.

You will find this term commonly used in Cybersecurity, Security Operations, Intelligence Analysis

Threat Modeling

The process of identifying, understanding, and communicating potential threats to a system, and then determining the value that potential mitigations would have in reducing or neutralizing those threats.