Cloud Lingo: What’s the Premise?

After a colleague of mine (@ VictorHavard) pointed out how frequently people use the upcoming terms incorrectly, I couldn’t help but notice it… a lot. It’s just like when you realize that a person says “um” at the end of every sentence. Or a strange noise in the background that keeps repeating itself. Or a strange mannerism that once you see it, you can’t un-see them.

So what’s the issue this time? Premises vs premise. Or more accurately, on or off premises vs on or off premise. Here in cloud-land only one really exists.

Here’s a quick lesson in case you don’t know the difference. (I won’t judge.)

The definition of premise is a “previous statement or proposition from which another is inferred.”  Premises refer to “a house or building occupied by a business.”

Based on that premise (pun intended), that means when you’re talking about cloud computing and the location of a workload, you should always use premises. If you find yourself in a jam or forget which is which, you could abbreviate it to “on prem” or “off prem” which is also ok with me.

Hopefully this short post was something you already you knew, but if it wasn’t, join those of us who do know the difference and help your colleagues out who aren’t in the know. If you learned something today, let me know @TalktoErik.