Premises vs. Premise in the Cloud
With all of the research I’ve been doing around cloud computing over the past few years, I’ve noticed something very disturbing about how people use the word premises. I’ve blogged about this before but it merits repeating on my TDWI blog. Maybe it’s because I come from a telecommunications background that this bothers me so much – but has anyone else noticed that people are misusing the words premise/premises when describing aspects of the cloud? The proper term is generally premises, people, as in – on your premises (see below).
From Dictionary.com
Premise: a proposition supporting or helping to support a conclusion, a statement considered to be true.
Premises: a tract of land including its buildings.
Therefore, when discussing where servers, services, etc. are located, for instance, you should use the term premises.
Even vendors in the space make this mistake and I cringe every time I hear it. I used to correct them, but I’ve given up doing that. I could list hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of this error. Has the definition of the word changed and I’m missing something? Or, has the word been used incorrectly so many times that it doesn’t matter anymore? My POV: It still matters.
Posted by Fern Halper, Ph.D. on April 17, 2013