Terminology

2185 terms, tools, patterns and metrics an architect is expected to use precisely. Each one gets a short explanation of what it is, and — where it matters — what it is commonly confused with. Search filters as you type; the column headers sort.

All areas2185 Architecture Fundamentals77 Distributed Systems107 Data Architecture110 Cloud Architecture89 Networking88 API & Integration Architecture82 Reliability & Resilience75 Observability70 Performance & Capacity Engineering72 Security Architecture81 Cost Architecture & FinOps66 Business Architecture67 Architecture Communication67 Enterprise Architecture66 Legacy Modernization66 AI-Era Architecture69 Software Architecture & Engineering71 Architecture Patterns71 Architecture Decision-Making63 The Architect's Meta-Skills61 Delivery & Release Engineering66 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience70 Testing & Quality Architecture66 Data Platform Architecture64 Streaming & Real-Time Data69 Data Governance & Semantics69 Frontend & Experience Architecture66 Edge, Mobile & IoT68 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture65 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk64

Kind Any concept785 practice729 pattern362 metric125 case-study77 tool62 protocol45

11 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Bin-Packing Efficiency Packing Density, Requested-to-Allocatable Ratio	metric	Rightsizing	The share of purchased node capacity that scheduled workloads have actually reserved, which is the missing link between a rightsizing campaign and the invoice it was supposed to reduce.
Commitment Coverage	metric	Reserved & Committed Capacity	The proportion of steady-state usage covered by discounted commitments, balanced against the risk of committing to capacity that is no longer needed.
Cost of Downtime	metric	Cost vs Reliability	The quantified business impact of unavailability per unit of time, which converts reliability investment from an argument into an arithmetic comparison.
Cost per Request	metric	Cost per Request	Total cost divided by units of business value — the metric that makes cost comparable across time, scale and design options.
Cost per Request	metric	Cost & FinOps	The fully-loaded infrastructure cost of serving one request, and the unit that makes architectural cost decisions comparable.
Funnel-Stage Cost Ratio Attempts per Conversion Cost, Pre-Conversion Cost Multiple	metric	Unit Economics	The cost incurred by all the attempts that precede one revenue event, expressed per revenue event, which exposes the case where making each attempt cheaper makes the business more expensive.
Telemetry Spend Ratio	metric	Observability Cost	Observability cost as a proportion of the infrastructure it observes, used as a tripwire for a category that grows silently.
Total Cost of Ownership TCO	metric	Cost & FinOps	The full lifetime cost of a capability, including the people, operations, upgrades and exit that a licence comparison leaves out.
Unit Economics	metric	Unit Economics	Infrastructure cost expressed per unit of business value delivered, which reveals efficiency trends that absolute spend cannot.
Unit Economics of a System	metric	Unit Economics	The cost to serve one unit of business value — a customer, an order, a request — which determines whether a system's economics improve or worsen with scale.
Utilisation Floor	metric	Rightsizing	The minimum utilisation a resource should sustain before it is considered over-provisioned, set with enough margin for failure and peak.