At CloudM, we talk "cloud" everyday. We know our secondary servers from our SaaS Integrations and our Managed Domains from our Multi-Cloud.
But, we understand that you might not get all the tech parlance we throw around in our articles, so we have put together this handy glossary to briefly define each of these terms.
Glossary (A-Z)
Terminology | Definition | Example |
Administrator | An administrator is a user that has permissions to view, edit and delete for certain tasks (that a basic user does not have). | For example, an email signature management administrator can view and edit the email signature options, and apply to an organizational unit or smart team. |
API | An interface that defines interactions between multiple software applications | |
Archive |
When a user is offboarded from their organization, we can add a step in their workflow to migrate all of their user data (Drive items, Emails and Chat) to a Storage Bucket. This allows an organization to keep data for a specific amount of time before deleting it, in accordance with data retention regulations, whilst freeing up licences. Additionally, Archive allows you to easily restore data from Storage back into CloudM Automate. |
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BigQuery | Google Application. BigQuery is a fully managed, serverless data warehouse that enables scalable analysis over petabytes of data | |
Cloud | The storing of data and applications across numerous servers, hosted by a third party | |
Cloud Storage | A model of data storage where your data isn't stored in physical on-premises servers that you own and maintain, but on a server or servers hosted by a third party cloud storage provider in "the cloud". You can access your data (over the internet) at any time, and data can be hosted on multiple servers, in multiple locations, to ensure that your data is backed up. | The major benefit of cloud storage is not having the costs of owning and maintaining the physical server network (otherwise known as "on-premises"). While paying for the amount of data that is needed to store with the cloud storage provider, so the solution is also scalable. A good example of Cloud Storage is our Archive solution. It allows us to migrate data to a Cloud Storage bucket (which is owned by the customer) and also restore/reclaim that data from the bucket, back into the customer's "live" domain (i.e. their Google Workspace domain) |
CloudM Migrate Hosted | CloudM Migrate Hosted is the Software as a Service (SaaS) version of CloudM Migrate. With no set-up required and needing less technical knowledge to run, this is the ideal solution for less complex migrations. Recommended for migrations with user counts under 500. CloudM Migrate Hosted can support up to a limit of 2500 users. |
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CloudM Migrate Self-Hosted | CloudM Migrate Self Hosted is the downloadable version of CloudM Migrate, ideal for large and complex migrations. Setup the product and use our browser-based interface to complete your migration. Recommended for migrations with user counts of 500 or more. |
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Destination | The Destination (or Destination Platform) is the platform / domain that users and data are migrated to. | There are less destinations than source platforms; these are Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure Storage, Google Cloud Storage |
GCP (Google Cloud Platform) | Google Cloud Platform is a suite of Cloud Computing services offered by Google that provides various services like compute, storage, networking, and many more that run on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for end-users like Gmail, Google Photos, and YouTube. It enables developers to build, test, and deploy applications on Google’s highly-scalable and reliable infrastructure. | Using GCP for several reasons but a couple of good examples are: 1) Creating Storage buckets that we can use to Archive data to, and 2) Creating Virtual Machines to help speed up migrations |
Google Workspace | Workspace is Google’s suite of office tools and apps. It lets you access all of Google’s productivity tools — including its office apps Docs, Sheets and Slides — all in one place and online. It also allows for collaboration between Workspace users. | |
Managed Domains | In CloudM, Managed Domains is a feature that allows Partners to access multiple domains quickly and easily without needing to sign in to each independently. Each domain gives the Partner access to certain features (roles) within the domain as an external user. | |
Microsoft 365 | Microsoft 365 is Microsoft's suite of office tools and apps. It lets you access all of Microsoft's productivity tools - including it's office apps Word, Excel and Powerpoint. | |
Multi-Cloud | Multi-cloud (also multicloud or multi cloud) is the use of multiple cloud computing and storage services in a single network architecture. This refers to the distribution of cloud assets, software, applications, and more across several cloud environments. With a typical multi-cloud architecture utilizing two or more public clouds as well as private clouds, a multi-cloud environment aims to eliminate the reliance on any single cloud provider or instance. |
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Multi-Server Migration | A migration that uses more than 1 server, with 1 server being designated as the Primary Server, and subsequent Secondary Servers processing the migration. | |
Offboarding | Offboarding is the process of removing an employee's profile and data from your organizations digital workplace when they leave a business so that they no longer have access to company files, emails etc/. | |
On Premises | The storing of data and applications within in-house servers and IT infrastructure | |
Organizational Unit(s) |
Only on Google domains. Groups that can be set up in a branching hierarchy (e.g. your company structure with each OU representing a department). They can be organized into Parent and Child OUs, so that some aspects of the Parent are (or can be enabled to be) inherited by any Child OU under them, and you can provide users in each OU with the correct access and permissions to do their role (e.g. Email Signature Management).
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A good example would be a company that has multiple brands, with each brand having their own Sales, Marketing, Development and Support teams. Set the OU structure so that, at the top (or root), is your company OU. Underneath the root OU, create an OU for each brand. That would act as Child OUs to the Company OU and would inherit specific properties as default, which can be edited if required. Now, can create OUs for each department under each brand. These would act as Child OUs to the brand OU.
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Onboarding | Onboarding is the process of adding a new employee to your organization and making sure they have all the assets required to do their job. | Onboarding in CloudM makes sure that an employee has a license assigned (e.g. Google Workspace), they have access to the right documents and calendars, and their email signature is correct and automatically applied. |
Permissions | Permission enables a very specific task within CloudM Platform (Automate OUs, Edit OUs,) and you may need to combine several permissions together into a Role to allow the user/admin full access to a task or feature. | Archive requires an administrator to have 3 specific permissions to fully enable it's functionality. If the admin only has one of these permissions, Archive will not work properly (some features will be missing or disabled). All 3 permissions need to be put together in a custom role (or added to an existing role) and assigned to the admin. |
Platform |
A platform is either the domain that you are migrating from (Source) or migrating to (Destination).
This is different from the CloudM Platform, which is the overall name for our CloudM product set, combining the Migrate, Automate and Archive applications.
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A business wants to move its whole digital workplace from a Microsoft 365 platform to a Google Workspace platform. |
Primary Server | The Primary Server is the main server in a multi-server migration that is used to process and delegate tasks to other (Secondary) servers. | |
Profile | In CloudM, each user has a unique profile. | Similar to a Facebook profile including an image, name, email address and contact details etc. |
Profile Fields | Profile Fields are fields that add information to a user's profile such as their name, job title, contact details, assigned licenses and their manager, for example. | |
Role Based Access Control (RBAC) | Use Roles to grant permissions to end-users. By doing so, you can make sure that only users that need access to specific information or a feature (e.g. email signature management) have access. | David, the IT Manager of Bond Resealant was struggling to keep up with the growing number of tasks he had to do day-to-day. David looked after everything from the onboarding and offboarding process for all members of staff, staff email signatures, as well as user permissions for the whole organization. The way it is needed to delegate certain permissions to other staff members to prevent an IT bottleneck from building up. |
Roles | A Role is a set of specific permissions designed to allow the user that it is allocated to to perform certain tasks within our software. A user can have multiple roles assigned to them. There are 2 default roles for CloudM Automate - Admin and User - and you can create as many custom roles as required. | For example, an administrator (who will already be assigned the Admin role) might have been handed the task of managing email signatures. In order to do this, they will need to be assigned a role that has the required permissions (which, in this case, have been handily grouped in a role template). |
SaaS integration | A process that allows cloud software applications to exchange information and commands. Integration can limit the duplication of tasks over several applications (or automate them), making the process quicker, easier and less prone to human error. |
For example, setting up offboarding workflows so that, when a user is offboarded, a command is sent to another software application (e.g. Slack) that automatically deactivates the user's access to that application. Other integrations (such as Bamboo HR) will send commands to CloudM when an action occurs in that application (e.g. a job title change). This can trigger a range of processes in CloudM, such as updating profile fields, email signatures, Smart Team functionality and Offboarding Workflows. |
Secondary Server | A Secondary Server is a server that receives commands from the Primary Server and processes the threads that have been assigned to it. | Servers can processes up to 20 threads at a time so the more Secondary Servers you can assign to a migration project, the quicker the migration project will take. |
Server | A Server is a computer that is used to process requests and deliver data to another computer over the internet or a local network. Servers are used as part of our migration process. | Any computer can be used for migration, as long as it has the resources to dedicate to the process (such as a laptop, PC, dedicated server tower or Virtual Machine). |
Service Account | A service account is a special user account that an application or service uses to interact with the operating system. Services use the service accounts to log on and make changes to the operating system or the configuration. Through permissions, you can control the actions that the service can perform. | |
Serviced Migrations | Our Serviced Migrations option basically means that our team plan and execute a customer's migration process, and are normally used for either very large or complex migrations, but could also be used by customers that simply do not have the time, expertise or desire to carry out a migration themselves. | |
Single-Server Migration | A migration that uses only 1 server (or device e.g. laptop or PC) to complete a migration. It can only process 20 consecutive threads | |
Smart Team |
A group of users that can be grouped either manually or dynamically (based on meeting certain criteria). Smart Teams can be given access to specific calendars and documents, roles, different email signatures, security policies and onboarding / offboarding workflows. In Google Workspace domains, Smart Teams are used to create bespoke groups without breaking your hierarchy (which is set in the Organizational Units / OUs). In Microsoft 365 domains, Smart Teams are used to create a hierarchy (as OUs do not exist). |
A good example would be a user being promoted to a Manager position within a company. Needing access to certain calendars and files (without losing the ones they already have as part of their Organizational Unit) and may have set up specific policies to secure Manager passwords and how they are offboarded. Create a dynamic Smart Team that automatically adds any user to the group who meets a certain criteria (in this instance, they could have a "Manager" tag added to their profile). They would automatically receive all the privileges required for their new role, without losing their existing permissions and access, but with policies that overwrite their current policies, where appropriate.
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Source | The Source (or Source Platform) is the platform / domain that users and data are migrated from. | Source examples: Google Vault, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Oracle Communications. Share Point, Drop Box, IMAP etc |
Virtual Machine | A Virtual Machine is an emulation of a physical computer, hosted on a computer. |
Setting up Virtual Machines using GCP or Microsoft Azure to create multiple secondary servers without needing the physical architecture. This always speeds up migrations by increasing the number of items being processed simultaneously. |
Abbreviations
Abbreviation | Full name |
IDP | Identity Provider |
AD | Active Directory |
API | Application Programming Interface |
RBAC | Role Based Access Control |
OU | Organizational Unit |
JML | Joiners, Movers, Leavers |
VFE | Vault Former Employee (License) |
DLP | Data Loss Prevention |
RDP | Remote Desktop Protocol |
MFA | Multi-Factor Authentication |
2FA | Two-Factor Authentication |
GDPR | General Data Protection Regulation |
GCDS | Google Cloud Directory Sync |
GCPS | Google Cloud Password Sync |
GWMME | Google Workspace Migration for Microsoft Exchange |
GAMLN | Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes |