Total cost of ownership
Licence, support, infrastructure, hosting and internal effort recorded against applications, software and hardware, then rolled up by process, capability or entity.
01Overview
Three jobs, one system of record.
An enterprise architecture platform earns its place when it does all three of these at once. Doing one well and the others badly is why so many repositories end up abandoned.
CaptureGet the estate into the model quickly, from spreadsheets, diagrams and existing tooling, without a twelve-month data programme.
MaintainKeep it current through distributed ownership, review workflows and quality scoring rather than one architect and good intentions.
UseAnswer real questions fast enough that people come back. Impact, cost, risk, dependency and roadmap, on demand.
02The catalogues
Four layers, plus everything that connects them.
Each catalogue is a first-class object type with its own fields, lifecycle and permissions. Objects are linked, not duplicated, so a change in one place is a change everywhere.
Business processesA hierarchy of value chains, processes, sub-processes and activities, each with an owner, a criticality rating and links to the applications that support it. The layer that lets an architecture conversation start with business consequence.
ApplicationsThe portfolio, with lifecycle state, business fit, technical fit, hosting model, vendor, owner, cost and contract. Duplicate detection runs across entities, which is where most redundancy hides in a group.
SoftwareDatabases, middleware, runtimes, operating systems and libraries at version level, each with its vendor support window. Components past or approaching end of support are flagged without anyone running a manual review.
HardwareServers, storage, network equipment, endpoints and operational technology, on premise and in cloud, with site, capacity, warranty and refresh dates. Few EA platforms model this layer. Operations teams ask about it first.
InterfacesEvery integration recorded with both endpoints, protocol, format, direction, frequency, payload and owner, including flows that cross company boundaries.
OwnershipA named business owner and technical owner on every object, with review intervals. When a record goes stale, the owner hears about it rather than the architect discovering it a year later.
03Interface mapping
The integration layer is where transformation programmes actually fail.
A migration plan built on an application list is a guess. A migration plan built on a complete interface map is a schedule. Accqrate treats interfaces as records in their own right rather than lines on a diagram.
- Both endpoints resolved to catalogue objects, never free text
- Cross-entity and third-party flows modelled explicitly
- Protocol, format, direction, frequency and data classification held on every record
- Interface criticality feeds impact analysis and continuity planning
- Orphaned interfaces surfaced automatically when an endpoint is retired
Interface record
SourceApplication object, Entity A
TargetApplication object, Entity C
ProtocolMessage queue, batch or API
PayloadData objects carried, with classification
FrequencyReal time, hourly, nightly, on demand
OwnerNamed technical owner and review date
04Cost, TCO and contracts
Architecture without cost is an opinion.
Rationalisation business cases fall apart when the numbers come from a different system than the architecture. Accqrate holds both against the same objects.
Contract lifecycle
Contracts, terms, renewal dates, notice periods and vendors held alongside the assets they cover, with alerts before the auto-renewal window closes.
Spend by decision
Model what a decommissioning actually saves once dependent interfaces, hardware and contracts are taken into account. The number survives the finance review.
05Intelligence
Grounded in your repository, traceable to the objects behind the answer.
Architecture decisions are too consequential for a system that sounds confident and cannot show its working.
Accelera, the architecture assistant
Ask questions in plain language and get answers built from repository objects, with the objects listed so the answer can be checked. Accelera works within the permissions of the person asking, so it never surfaces an entity someone is not entitled to see.
- Every answer cites the catalogue records it was drawn from
- Gaps are reported as gaps rather than filled with plausible guesses
- Available in each supported interface language
Questions people actually ask
DependencyWhich processes stop if we retire this application in Entity B
RiskWhat is running on software past vendor end of support
CostWhat does order to cash cost us to run across the group
DuplicationWhere do two entities pay for the same capability
AI impact analysis
Select an object and see the full blast radius across processes, applications, software, hardware and interfaces, ranked by criticality, with the entities affected called out separately.
Architecture decisions
Record the decision, the options considered, the rationale and the objects affected. Decisions stay attached to the architecture, so the reasoning survives the people who made it.
Anomaly and gap detection
Applications without owners, interfaces without endpoints, hardware without a site, contracts without renewal dates. Surfaced continuously rather than found during an audit.
06Modelling and onboarding
Get the estate in, then keep modelling in the tool rather than around it.
Excel and register onboarding
Guided column mapping, validation before commit, and a preview of what will be created or updated. Import the application register you already maintain and start from something real on day one.
AI diagram discovery
Upload existing architecture diagrams. Accqrate reads shapes, labels and connectors, proposes catalogue objects and interfaces, and puts every suggestion in front of an architect to accept, edit or reject. Nothing enters the model unreviewed.
Native architecture modelling
Create and relate objects directly, with typed relationships, controlled vocabularies and validation rules. The model is data, so it stays queryable rather than becoming a picture.
TOGAF alignment
Business, data, application and technology layers, architecture building blocks, and a decision record structure that follows the standard without forcing teams that do not use it to adopt the vocabulary.
Visual architecture canvas
Draw views on top of the repository. Because the diagram is generated from objects, it updates when the estate does, which is the difference between a view and a drawing.
Architecture explorer
Traverse the estate object by object, following relationships in any direction, filtering by entity, lifecycle, owner, risk or cost. Built for people who are looking for something rather than browsing.
07Reporting and dashboards
Views that are built once and stay right.
Because reports read the live repository, the board pack does not need a data gathering exercise behind it.
Portfolio views
Business fit against technical fit, lifecycle distribution, hosting mix and duplication, filtered by entity or capability.
Risk views
Obsolescence exposure, single points of failure, unowned assets and undocumented interfaces.
Cost views
Spend by application, capability, process, entity and vendor, with renewal calendars.
Roadmap views
Current state against target state, with the interfaces and dependencies each phase touches.
08Multi-company and environments
One repository for the whole group.
Each company gets its own governed space, its own catalogues, its own owners and its own permission model. The group gets a consolidated view across all of them, with shared reference data and standards inherited from the centre.
- Compare portfolios across entities to find the same capability bought repeatedly
- Roll group standards down while allowing local extensions where regulation requires them
- Onboard an acquisition into its own space, then integrate at your own pace
- Carve out an entity by exporting a complete, self-contained model
- Restrict visibility so an entity sees its own estate and nothing else
Environments
Production
The estate as it is today, governed and published
Target state
The estate as the roadmap intends it to be
Scenario clone
A full copy for a what-if, discarded or promoted
Environment cloning
Clone an entire environment in one action, model a merger, a migration or a mass decommissioning inside it, run impact analysis on the result, then promote the parts that were agreed. Production stays untouched until a decision is made.
09Governance, quality and audit
The repository is only as good as the discipline around it.
Accqrate builds the discipline into the platform so it does not depend on one diligent person staying in the role.
WorkflowsConfigurable review and approval for creating, changing and retiring objects, routed to the right owner or board.
Data qualityCompleteness and freshness scored per catalogue and per entity, with the specific missing fields listed rather than a single unhelpful percentage.
DiscussionsThreaded comments held against the object being discussed, so context is not lost in email.
Audit trailEvery change attributed to a person, timestamped and retained, with before and after values available for review.
AdministrationCentral control of object types, fields, vocabularies, lifecycles and review intervals, applied consistently across every company.
10Security, access and languages
Role-based access
Permissions by role, entity, catalogue and field. A subsidiary architect sees their estate, a group architect sees everything, a vendor manager sees contracts and nothing else.
Identity and assurance
Single sign-on and directory integration, encryption in transit and at rest, EU hosting options, and operations run under an ISO 27001 certified management system with GDPR obligations built into the data model.
Multi-language
Interface and content localisation so a group operating across regions can maintain one model without forcing one working language on everyone.
11By initiative
Six reasons teams bring Accqrate in.
Nobody buys an enterprise architecture platform for its own sake. They buy it because a decision is due.
Application rationalisationScore business fit and technical fit, find duplicate capability across entities, and model the saving properly by including the interfaces, hardware and contracts that go with each retirement. The plan survives contact with the people who own the systems.
Cloud and platform migrationSequence waves against a complete interface map rather than an application list. Model the target estate in a cloned environment, run impact analysis, and hand the programme a dependency-ordered schedule.
Mergers, carve-outs and divestmentsOnboard an acquired estate into its own company space without disturbing the group model. For a divestment, isolate what belongs to the entity, identify every shared service and cross-entity interface, and export a self-contained model for the buyer.
Technology obsolescence and riskVersion-level software records with vendor support dates turn obsolescence into a forward calendar. See what falls out of support in the next four quarters and which business processes sit behind each item.
IT cost and TCO reductionBring licence, support, infrastructure and contract data into the same model as the architecture, then roll it up by capability or entity. Cost conversations move from allocation arguments to evidence.
Audit and compliance readinessA complete asset and interface inventory, named owners, data classification on flows, a full change history and access controls that stand up to review. The evidence pack is a report rather than a project.
12By role
Enterprise architect
Own the model without being buried by it
Onboarding, distributed ownership and workflow review spread the maintenance load across the organisation. Quality scoring shows where attention is actually needed.
CIO and IT leadership
One consistent picture across every company
Portfolio, cost, risk and roadmap views that reconcile, because they are drawn from one repository rather than assembled from fourteen submissions.
Solution architect
Design against the deployed estate
Check what exists, follow the dependencies, apply the standards and record the decision where the next architect will look for it.
Security architect
See exposure as a standing view
Unsupported versions, unowned assets, undocumented interfaces and cross-border data flows, monitored continuously rather than sampled annually.
IT finance and vendor management
Tie spend to the asset it pays for
Contracts, renewals, notice periods and total cost held against the architecture, with a renewal calendar that arrives before the auto-renewal does.
Transformation and PMO
Scope on evidence
Clone the current state, model the target, and let impact analysis define what each phase touches and in what order.