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

66 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Trough-Based Commitment Baseline Reservation, Commit to the Floor	practice	Reserved & Committed Capacity	Sizing reserved capacity to the quietest period rather than the average, because only the trough is capacity you are certain to use for the whole commitment term.
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.
Waste Elimination Zero-Reliability-Cost Reduction, Cloud Hygiene, Orphan Cleanup	practice	Waste Elimination	Removing spend that buys nothing - orphaned resources, oversized instances, idle environments, over-retention - which is typically a substantial fraction of an unmanaged estate and costs no reliability whatsoever.
Waste Elimination	practice	Waste Elimination	Removing spend that produces no value at all — the least controversial and most consistently available saving.