What's in a word: Premise vs Premises

The rise of the cloud has made it necessary to distinguish between solutions that are hosted and solutions that are installed on location. This distinction requires a term for the latter – and “premises-based” or “on-premises” are what we often use.

They are great words that, unfortunately, are frequently misspelled, “premises” being erroneously replaced with “premise.” “Premise-based” or “on-premise” appear everywhere, from help forum posts to UC magazine articles to analyst white papers. But “premise” and “premises” are two very different words:

premises:

plural noun
A house or building, together with its land and outbuildings, occupied by a business or considered in an official context:

• The company has moved to new premises.
• Alcohol is not allowed on the premises.
• [treated as singular] The three had negotiated a lease for a premises in Boothstown, Manchester.

(http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/premises)

premise:

singular noun
Logic – a previous statement or proposition from which another is inferred or follows as a conclusion:

• If the premise is true, then the conclusion must be true.

An assertion or proposition which forms the basis for a work or theory:

• The fundamental premise of the report.

(http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/premise)

“Premises-based” refers to a solution that is based in your physical location. A “premise-based” solution would be one that is based on an idea or logic – which, ideally, would be true of any solution, hosted or not. And does happen to be true of Mitel’s solutions, which range from hosted to premises-based to everything in between.

If you would like to learn more about Mitel’s cloud communications, we will be demonstrating the full range of our cloud capabilities at Cloud Connect in Santa Clara, California today and tomorrow (Booth #503).

Stop by the Mitel booth (#503) to see the following demos:

1. Collaboration – Unified Communicator® Advanced (UCA), Mitel Collaboration Advanced (MCA) Desktop Clients
2. Mobility – Unified Communicator® Advanced (UCA) Mobility for iOS, Android and RIM
3. Video – Mitel Unified Communicator® Advanced (UCA) Desktop Client, UC360
4. Contact Center
5. Mitel AnyWare
6. Virtualization – VDI, vMotion

To stay in the conversation during Cloud Connect, follow @mitel, and @Cloud_Connect. Don’t forget to use the Twitter hashtag #ccevent.

We hope you will join us at the event to see how Mitel can provide the bridge to the cloud for your organization.