The Technology Architecture describes NIH’s current and future technical infrastructure and specific hardware and software technologies that support NIH's information systems. It provides guidance and principles for implementing technologies that are proven to work well with existing and planned technologies.
The Technology Architecture is recorded as a series of bricks, patterns, and architecture principles. The following diagram illustrates how the technology architecture fits within the NIH Enterprise Architecture Framework.
NIH Enterprise Architecture Framework
The following technical areas, or domains, comprise the NIH Technical Architecture:
- Applications Technology– identifies the IT tools (hardware and software) that enable the development of applications, which automate specific business tasks. Examples of applications technologies include application development languages, application development patterns, and application servers.
- Collaboration– includes technologies and tools that enable NIH users to access vital information resources, share information, and work and communicate effectively and efficiently with peers, customers, and the public independent of geography.
- Data Technology– identifies technical tools (software) that enable information storage, retrieval, management, and analysis. Typically this includes database management systems.
- Integration Technology– identifies the technologies, products, and mechanisms that enable applications to communicate with each other effectively while preserving information and data integrity.
- Networks– consists of the major technical elements required to provide data and Internet communications between NIH ICs and locations around the globe, as well as communications with business partner sites (e.g., universities, hospitals, and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and its other operating divisions).
- Platforms– identifies the underlying hardware and software that determine an information system’s operations, functions, and specialization.
- Security– describes a set of standards to follow and products that have been shown to work well when developing security solutions, with the objective of maintaining the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of NIH information and information systems such that the level of protection is commensurate with risk.
- Systems Management– identifies technical tools for monitoring and collecting data on NIH system performance to enable better availability, performance, and reliability from the IT environment.