ArchiMate® 3.2 Specification

The previous chapters have presented the concepts to model the Business, Application, and Technology Layers of an enterprise. However, a central issue in Enterprise Architecture is business-IT alignment: how can these layers be matched? This chapter describes the relationships that the ArchiMate language offers to model the link between business, applications, and technology.

11.1. Alignment of the Business Layer and Lower Layers

Figure 104 shows the relationships between the Business Layer, the Application Layer, and the Technology Layer elements. There are two main types of relationships between these layers:

1. Serving relationships; for example, between application service and the different types of business behavior elements, and between application interface and business role; vice versa, serving relationships between business service and application behavior elements, and between business interface and application component. These relationships represent the behavioral and structural aspects of the support of the business by applications.

1. Realization relationships; for example, from an application process or function to a business process or function, or from a data object or a technology passive structure element to a business object, to indicate that the data object is a digital representation of the corresponding business object, or the technology element is a physical representation of the business object. Note that there is no realization of business internal active structure elements by application or technology elements because people cannot be realized by applications or technology. Instead, the business behavior of those active structure elements can be realized by application or technology behavior elements, to which in turn application or technology active structure elements can be assigned.

In addition, there may be an aggregation relationship between a product and an application or technology service, and a data or technology passive structure element, to indicate that these services or objects can be offered directly to a customer as part of the product.