Documentation
Technical guides to enterprise architecture, cited research on enterprise AI, and plain-language explainers. Pick an area, or search by title.
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Architecture: Foundations
- From Primitives to Cloud ConstructsControl planes, data planes, static stability, and why every cloud product exists
- Distributed Systems and TimeTimeouts, retries, idempotency, quorum, fencing and clocks
- The Numbers Architects Reason WithAvailability, queueing, Little's law, KV-cache sizing, error budgets and cost per token
Architecture: Cloud platforms
- Azure, AWS and Google Cloud ComparedResource hierarchy, IAM evaluation, policy engines and networking
- Cloud Networking, DNS and Private EndpointsWho can talk to whom, over what path, resolved by whose DNS
- Identity, Tokens and AuthorizationToken validation, revocation windows, continuous access evaluation and on-behalf-of
- Data, Storage and DatabasesSources of truth, derived copies, object storage across providers, and CDC
- Compute and Kubernetes ArchitectureVMs, containers, serverless, the Kubernetes control plane, DRA and version skew
- Security, Secrets and PKIWhat an attacker can reach after one foothold
- Observability, Operations and GovernanceSeeing it from outside, progressive delivery, and FOCUS cost data
Architecture: The enterprise estate
Architecture: AI systems
Architecture: Failure and design
- Failure Architecture: How Outages PropagateFive incidents, five fail modes, the failure matrix and a blast-radius method
- Twenty-Two Architecture PrinciplesEach with its first-, second- and third-order consequences
- Architecture Trade-Offs and Second-Order EffectsCommon decisions, their hidden costs, and how the domains couple
- 28 Reference Architecture ScenariosFrom an internal AI assistant to a zero-trust application
- Worked Architecture ExamplesAn AI assistant, a regional failover and a paying agent, from requirements to failure
Architecture: Practice
- Architecture Misconceptions and False AbstractionsTwenty-four wrong ideas, why they sound right, and what replaces them
- Architecture Exercises and Design ReviewsTen derivation exercises and eight graded design reviews, with answers
- Technology Lifecycle and the Architecture Knowledge GraphEmerging to retired, versioning, replacement strategies and a graph of the estate
Research reports
Explainers
- The EU AI ActWhat Europe's AI law asks for, and who it reaches
- ISO/IEC 42001The management standard for how an organisation governs AI
- The NIST AI Risk Management FrameworkA voluntary US framework: govern, map, measure, manage
- Data protection law and AIWhy where the model runs, and what it reads, decides your obligations
- Model risk managementThe discipline regulated firms use to keep models honest, applied to AI
- AI rules around the worldA short map of the main laws and frameworks outside the EU
- BaselineMeasuring how the work runs before anything changes
- Control groupThe fair comparison that turns an impression into a number
- The AI profit and loss viewThree columns of value against the full cost
- Total cost of ownershipEverything an AI system costs, not just the licence
- AI inventoryKnowing what you run before anyone asks
- Language models and open weightsWhat a language model is, and what it means to own one as a file
- Private deploymentRunning the model where you control it
- Model gatewaysOne door every AI request goes through
- Owning or renting the hardwareHow to decide, and why the answer is measured rather than assumed
- Tokens and inferenceThe unit AI is measured in, and why sizing depends on it
- Grounded answersAnswers built from your documents, with the source attached
- AI agentsSoftware that carries out a task and stops for a person
- Human sign-offWhere a person decides, and why it is designed in from the start
- Access and identities for AIGiving an AI system its own login, permissions and record
- Tuning and routingSmall models for routine work, large ones for the hard cases
- Evaluation setsA fixed set of real questions that scores every change
- System of recordThe one system that owns a fact
Reference
- Evidence, Verification and Open QuestionsWhat was checked, against what, and what is still unresolved
- Claim Verification StandardHow security and provider-specific statements are tied to exact sources, dates and conditions
- Enterprise Architecture GlossaryThe terms the atlas uses, in a sentence or two each
- Citation libraryEvery source the site cites, linked to its publisher.
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