In a number of discussions with IT professionals, there was some confusion regarding products and what scale out and scale up really means.  The confusion centers on the implications for choosing one type of product or another and how they bring value versus cost and complexity to their environments. Unfortunately, the confusion is aided by the marketing messages with the products in that the focus on valuable capabilities of the product when the IT professional may not have the basic understandings of scale out versus scale up.  This paper covers the basic differences and provides guidance for IT professionals.