Usage of "stood up" to mean "set up"

I was reading this question on meta.ELU and was struck by what, to me, was a strange use of the phrasal verb to stand up:

The site for English Language Learners was stood up in large part so that non-native speakers could have a place where their questions, which would be regarded by some to be "too basic" for ELU, could ask their questions. The site was stood up in January of this year.

Now, to me that means that the poor site was left waiting for someone who never showed up. However, the author of the question (J.R., one of our highest rep users) seems to be using it to mean was set up. Is this common usage? Is it from a particular dialect? I have never come across it before and cannot find it in the dictionary definitions that I checked.

This is very interesting; as the offending writer, I had no idea this would sound so strange to so many.

I did some research, and I found that the term seems to be used almost exclusively by two communities:

• Computer systems and web development
• Government and military organizations

Given that I have a computer science background with more than a decade of government service, I suppose it makes the expression sound especially natural to my ear. (As I've said in other answers and comments, the longer you are familiar with some expression, the easier it is to presume others are familiar with it, too.)

Here are some usages I found scouring the web. As one can see, each instance can be tied back to one the two realms I have mentioned – government organizations, or technical support:

• The Wyoming Military Department will stand up a new directorate
• “The economy and tourism in the region Batur and Kintamani Bangli will be more advanced, because behind Mount Batur, it will stand up a new airport,” said Wacik.
• This fall, AMC will stand up a new command that will coordinate the activities of the Army’s extensive web of labs and technology centers
• In two years, we’ve restructured twice around getting to the right market-focused, customer-focused type of organization. We stood up a new business development organization, and we were able to move our win rates from the low teens to close to 50 percent
• In anticipation of my upcoming iPhone application release, I figured it was time to stand up a new website
• For example, the marketing department wants to run a new ad campaign, needs to stand up a new website, [or] maybe it needs to put up a new shopping portal to respond to a threat from a competitor.
• The customer stood up a new server and proceeded to restore the system from tape backup.

So, yes, the expression "stood up" means roughly "set up, organized, and opened for business," but, evidently, it might not be a familiar expression outside of those two domains.

It is a synonym for "set up" with reference to servers, web sites, or applications, usually with the implication that the process of setting up is straightforward and quick. This is semi-technical jargon, apparently not in any dictionary yet (I even tried ngrams searches), but in fairly common use.

I say semi-technical, because it is the kind of phrase one hears more from people who are trying to sound technical or from marketing types than from the people actually responsible for "standing up" a site.

Edit:

Here's another site cite: http://ctovision.com/2012/01/quickstart-guide-stand-up-your-cloud-based-servers-with-rackspace/ "Quickstart Guide: Stand up your cloud-based servers with Rackspace"

And: http://envalo.com/3-sizes-of-magento-which-one-fits-you-best/ "It is a great tool for this group of users to quickly and cost efficiently stand up a site,..."

According to Wiktionary (and my own opinion) you are indeed correct. Some more fitting words would be:

• founded
• launched
• created
• christened <- would work, but is kind of weird.
• erected <- also kind of weird.

I currently work in Canadian federal government and law enforcement and use the term myself but am not always understood so I can't say it's common. However, I have served in both the Canadian and Australian armies and in those occupations worked with British, American, and other forces and it was clear we all understood "stand up" to have the same meaning; to come to a state of readiness.

I've worked in a marketing communications role for U.S. IT services companies for a few decades, and I've only recently heard the phrase "stand up a system" by the IT professionals I support at my current employer. "Stand up" is used here to describe specific client engagements in which a software system is set up or deployed for the first time. My current employer's primary market is U.S.-based oil and gas operators (i.e., exploration and production companies), and one of our secondary markets is startup O&G companies, which usually operate for a time without a lot of IT systems and infrastructure that is essential in mid-size and larger O&G companies. And it's in our marketing efforts for startups where I'm encountering the "stand up a system" language (e.g., "We can help you stand up your operational and regulatory reporting systems. . . .")--which is why I would offer that in the U.S. IT services market, "to stand up a system" means to set up a system and to do so for the first time.