Technical Reference Model

The Technical Reference Model (TRM) provides a reference of generic platform services and technology elements and acts as a substrate upon which technology architectures can be built. The TRM provides a set of architectural and solution building blocks that will ultimately provide the platform for business and infrastructure applications that will deliver the application and infrastructure services. The Technical Reference Model ensures that architectures are created consistently and repeatedly based on a standard set of elements. The model should be created as part of the set up of the architecture programs but will typically require extending as technology standards are introduced and retired.

The Technology elements section of the TRM is a hierarchical structure and classifies parts of the infrastructure based on their function as a Physical or Virtual Node, Device or Execution Environment. This allows any type of technology concept, physical or virtual to be modeled including a wide range of infrastructure pieces such as servers, routers, operating systems, hypervisors, database management systems, web servers and more.

Once defined, the Technical Reference Model can be used as the basis for all Infrastructure Architecture models by creating instances of the Infrastructure elements; for example, a particular data center or facility might contain a specific manufacturer's switch or router.