Take the 2-minute tour ×  If I’m not mistaken, the terms
software and hardware were ordinary English words, but they have
been widely popularized by popularity of computers. How much
they are common (and acceptable by native speakers) to be used
for other systems; for example, defining software and hardware
in a company. It is indeed common in management literature, but
I am not sure if it is plain English or a metaphor for comparing
the system with well-known computer architecture.  In a logical
comparison, we can define a coach as software and players as
hardware (just a schema not exactly). How does is sound to a
native speaker? Of course, I mean in general, not this
exaggerated example.  share|improve this question I'd call the
coach an end user, the playbook software, and the players (team)
hardware if I wanted to make that analogy. Native speakers will
probably generally understand what you're on about if you use
those terms, but even computer-literate people might find using
the terminology this way a