The ‘On-Premise’ Debate: How a Data Center Slang Term Went Mainstream
How did the term ‘on-premise’ become a popular substitute for ‘on-premises’ in the tech industry? And does the grammatical error really matter today?
February 22, 2024
This article originally appeared on Data Center Knowledge.
The term ‘on-premise’ is so widespread in the cloud and data center industry that it barely raises an eyebrow. From television interviews to major conference stages, CIOs, CTOs, and CEOs have long been using ‘on-premise’ as an established term when discussing digital transformation, data workflows, and where data resides in hybrid cloud architectures.
Indeed, the phrase has become so common that it’s easy to overlook the fact that ‘on-premise’ is a grammatically inaccurate truncation of the term ‘on-premises.’ And while the casual observer might question the importance of a single missing letter, there are still some who marvel at the longevity and great heights that ‘on-premise’ has achieved.
For an industry so focused on precision, it is curious that the use of ‘on-premise’ has become so widespread. But when did this syllable-shortened alternative slip into common parlance? And does its ongoing usage really matter if the meaning remains?
The ‘On-Premise’ Origin Story
In a cloud and data center context, ‘on-premises’ refers to a group of servers that a business privately owns and controls. Simply put, the on-premises model refers to servers, data, or an entire data center physically located inside your corporate building.
It’s easy to see why ‘on-prem’ became a common synonym of this term – the handy truncation coming in at a whole two syllables (50%) shorter. Somewhere along the way, however, the phrase ‘on-premise’ joined the conversation. And this theoretically meant something else entirely.
Back when early virtualization evangelist and former senior VMware technologist Brian Madden referenced the ‘on-premise’ phenomenon in a 2013 blog post, he was stridently against it.
“Even today, when I hear ‘on-premise,’ it’s still a little bit like fingernails on a chalkboard because grammatically it’s not correct,” said Madden. “I was always against it, and at the time I was ‘right-fighting’ it, and saying everyone should be calling it ‘premi-ses.’ Why? Because it’s premises! I’m a rule-follower and a writer, so I like proper grammar!”
Madden said he noticed the term gaining momentum in the mid-2010s when Citrix, the Fort Lauderdale-based virtualization software developer began using ‘on-premise’ and ‘on-premises’ interchangeably in its technical documentation and other customer-facing materials.
“Then around 2018, VMware started mixing the terms together as one and the same before finally going with ‘on premise,’ in almost every instance,” Madden recalls. “By that time, I was actually working at VMware and they were exclusively calling it ‘on-premise.’ I think the change happened because ‘on prem-i-sis,’ was just a lot of syllables to say, especially if you have to refer to it over and over again during a presentation. ”
Adaptive Language
While most people would recognize “for all intensive purposes” or “biting my time” as malapropisms, CIOs and even well-known tech CEOs today freely use ‘on-premise.’
Which version of ‘on-premises’ they use can signal how confident the speaker is regarding cloud technologies and digital transformation. IT professionals and C-Suite executives who feel they have a clear vision of the future, will likely use ‘on-premise’ to showcase their knowledge of their industry’s inside baseball lingo, and that they have a sense of where Wayne Gretzky’s proverbial hockey puck is going