Please, can someone explain the term "enterprise" to me. I work in a corporation, I hear it twice a week, I develop it, and still have no idea what it means.

I understand under this term hard-/software that is designed for business purposes. If I am false, correct me.

I see it as a marketing word. In my mind, there's a software scale : Personal -> Business -> Enterprise. It's pure nonsense, but that's the way I imagine it.

In my head enterprise is for corporate applications. Facebook for example is in my head not corporate, google apps for work is.

A bespoke scalable web application for your companies CRM would be enterprise. A Wordpress site advertising the company would not be.

I think if something has enterprise pre or post product you would expect it to integrate into your corporate infrastructure and be more resilient to bugs.

#awkward now you made me question my own beliefs

Legacy (trollface)

@CrashOverride legacy?????

@philcr Most Enterprise software we've had to support or integrate with is Legacy, like HP Process Automation, or Internet Explorer...

To add to the confusion, here's enterprise FizzBuzz: https://github.com/EnterpriseQualit...

I just assumed it was a few more features for way too much money.

Perhaps a word you slap on to your products to charge more money for providing support after purchase.

Enterprise = really bad, overpriced software that has a licence and support so you can blame someone else when it breaks.

From my ( very much theoretical) knowledge an enterprise software should be a software that is highly reliable, customised, extendable, hackable ( meaning proper error reports and limited restrictions on user accessing and changing core settings) and with enough available APIs to integrate it into the company workflow.
Or at least that is what our professor told us were his specifications when he was once working on embedded systems in factories.

I think it used to mean that the software was more robust, secure and flexible for the highest level of business needs. However now it tends to mean expensive and probably horrible to use.

Software that is more suited for Enterprise, for example GitLab EE, has features that the developer thinks are not needed for other users. Windows is another good example. Windows 7 Enterprise's NFS support or Linux Submodule arent needed at your grandma's PC where she just checks email. Ubuntu's enterprise package has support and server management features like landscape managed for you. Also, good enterprise software is often more stable than consumergrade. It's the same as ECC RAM. ECC is for pro's where you have a lot to loose and normal RAM is for everyday use where failures are not that critical. Same with SAS and SATA, 10GBits Ethernet and Gbits Ethernet and Xeon's and Core i's.