The language of an industry is unique. Words exist in some industries for concepts that have no relevance or relationship to other industries. Just like countries, who have citizens who speak multiple languages, there are groups of companies that offer support, such as IT outsourcing, to companies in any industry. To do so, they have to speak the language of the particular industry they service.

In the IT world, there has long been recognition that in order to support an industry effectively, there needs to be the technology equivalent of a language. In some cases this refers to the processes that are unique to an industry, like verbs in a sentence. In other cases it reflects the unique nature of the commodity or product that is the focus of an industry, such as a financial trade, or a container ship full of cars. Regardless, the understanding that a specialized vocabulary exists on an industry level came very early on in the natural evolution of computer systems.