ArchiMate

ArchiMate is an open and independent modelling language for enterprise architecture, supported by different tool vendors and consulting firms. ArchiMate provides instruments to support enterprise architects in describing, analyzing and visualizing the relationships among business domains in an unambiguous way.

Just like an architectural drawing in classical building architecture describes the various aspects of the construction and use of a building, ArchiMate offers a common language for describing the construction and operation of business processes, organizational structures, information flows, IT systems, and technical infrastructure. This insight helps the different stakeholders to design, assess, and communicate the consequences of decisions and changes within and between these business domains.

ArchiMate is one of the open standards hosted by the Open Group and based on the IEEE standard 1471.

Architecture framework

A framework is used to structure the concepts and relationships of the ArchiMate language. There is the concept of layers in the enterprise architecture: business-, application and technology layer. In each layer, three aspects are considered: active things that have "behaviour", an internal "structure" and use or communicate "information".