Scope
Process to hardware, in one model
Structure
Unlimited companies and environments
Method
TOGAF aligned out of the box
Assurance
ISO 27001, GDPR, EU hosting
01The problem
Most organisations do not have an architecture problem. They have a truth problem.
The estate is documented in eleven places, all of them slightly wrong. When a decision needs to be made quickly, nobody can answer the simple questions with confidence.- The inventory is a spreadsheet. It was accurate on the day it was exported and has been drifting ever since.
- The diagrams do not match the estate. They were drawn for a project that finished two years ago and never went back into a model.
- Nobody owns anything. Applications have sponsors on paper and orphans in practice.
- Cost sits in finance, architecture sits in IT. Neither view can answer what a capability actually costs to run.
- Obsolescence is discovered, not predicted. The end of support date arrives before the migration plan does.
- Every entity works differently. The group has one strategy and fourteen separate versions of the truth.
02The catalogues
One repository, five catalogues, no dead ends.
Business process catalogue
Model the value chains the business actually runs, then connect each process to the applications that support it. When a system is questioned, the conversation starts with what it does for the business rather than what it costs.- Process hierarchy with owners, criticality and volumes
- Direct links to supporting applications and interfaces
- Gap analysis where a process has no system, or five
HoldsProcess, sub-process, activity, owner, criticality
Links toApplications, capabilities, organisational units
AnswersWhich processes stop if this application is retired
03Multi-company and environments
Model the group, not just the company that bought the licence.
Most EA platforms assume one organisation with one estate. Real groups have subsidiaries, shared services, acquired businesses still running their own stack, and joint ventures nobody wants to touch.
Arqifacts holds each company as its own governed space with its own catalogues, owners and permissions, while the group keeps a consolidated view across all of them. Compare entities. Find the same application bought six times. Carve one out without unpicking the rest.
Repository structure
Group repository
Entity A
Entity B
Entity C
Production
Target
Sandbox
Clone any environment to test a merger, a migration or a decommissioning plan before a single record changes in production.
04Intelligence
AI that reads your repository, not the internet.
Impact analysis
Select any object and see everything upstream and downstream of it across all four layers, with the interfaces that carry the dependency.Decision intelligence
Architecture decisions are recorded against the objects they affect, with options considered and rationale kept. New architects inherit reasoning, not folklore.Diagram discovery
Upload the diagrams you already have. Arqifacts reads the shapes and connectors and proposes catalogue entries and interfaces for review.05Governance and trust
A repository people trust is a repository people use.
- Data quality scoring on every catalogue, so gaps are a number rather than a feeling
- Governance workflows for creating, changing and retiring objects, with approval steps you configure
- Ownership management that keeps a named person against every object and escalates when a record goes stale
- Discussions in context, so the debate about a system sits on the system
- Full audit trail of who changed what, when and why, retained for compliance review
Repository health, illustrative
ApplicationsOwner assigned, lifecycle set, cost linked
SoftwareVersion recorded, support date checked
InterfacesBoth endpoints resolved, protocol stated
ContractsRenewal date and notice period held
Stale recordsFlagged to owner after the review interval
06Who it serves
Six people ask six different questions of the same model.
Keep the model current without becoming a full-time data entry function
Onboarding from spreadsheets and diagrams, distributed ownership and workflow review mean the repository is maintained by the organisation, not by one person.Answer board questions without a two-week data gathering exercise
Portfolio, cost, risk and roadmap views built from the live repository, consistent across every company in the group.Design against what is actually deployed
Explore the estate, check standards and reference architectures, and record the decision where the next architect will find it.Find the exposure before the audit does
Unsupported software versions, undocumented interfaces, unowned assets and cross-border data flows surfaced as standing views.Connect spend to the thing it pays for
Contracts, renewal dates, notice periods and total cost of ownership held against the applications and assets they cover.Scope a programme on evidence rather than assumption
Clone the current state, model the target, and let impact analysis show what each phase actually touches.07Getting started
Four phases from spreadsheet to governed model.
Onboard what you have
Import existing spreadsheets and registers through guided mapping. The first catalogue is populated in days, not quarters.Recover the diagrams
Feed in the architecture diagrams already sitting in the file share. Discovery proposes objects and interfaces for an architect to accept or reject.Model and connect
Link processes to applications, applications to software and hardware, and everything to its interfaces, owners and contracts.Govern and publish
Turn on review workflows, quality scoring and dashboards. The repository becomes the reference the organisation actually consults.4 layers
Process, application, software and hardware in one connected modelUnlimited
Companies and environments in a single repositoryMulti Languages
Interface and content localisation for distributed teamsFull History
Every change attributed, dated and retained for audit