I’ve been seeing a lot of hubbub lately around the proper phrasing for applications an organization hosts itself– in other words, anything that isn’t in the cloud. People are cringing when the phrase “on-premise” is used in lieu of the grammatically correct “on-premises”. I’ve seen self-appointed grammar police weigh in from any number of directions– blogs, Yammer conversations, even an audience member shout-out during my presentation at SharePoint Conference 2014 earlier this spring. And you know what? None of it matters.
Let me repeat: None of it matters. The Cloud doesn’t care.
The bottom line is, people are having this conversation as an offshoot of something far more important– we are in the midst of an historic shift in application architecture. The movement toward the Cloud is well-documented and I needn’t elaborate further on it, other than to say that it’s not “on its way” anymore– it is finally here, and here in a big way.
People can debate the use of “on-premise” versus “on-premises” all they like (or even the presence of that little hyphen in the middle) but the only reason they’re discussing it is this one: The market for it is shrinking. The Cloud is increasingly becoming a part of how we do business in IT. Eventually, it’ll pass a tipping point where we stop thinking of it as something separate and simply accept it as status quo. Curiously, linguistics gives us a very close parallel to illustrate the point.
The English language evolves based on usage. It’s a living thing. That’s why terms like “ain’t” and “y’all” can now be found in even the most distinguished dictionaries and why, with continued (mis)use, “on-premise” will go from being colloquially accepted to formally official. Much like the Cloud will go from where it is today– a more and more common means of hosting applications and data– to the ubiquitous status quo. Stand down, then, all y’all grammar police. You may as well try and stop the flow of time.
