ERIA has recognized that various roles have been appointed as 'architect in and around information management in organizations'. Often these roles have been identified based on career considerations. Examples of architect names are: the application architect, information architect, business architect, enterprise architect, web architect, infrastructure architect, architect of the firewall, etc.

ERIA assumes that the architect in and around information management must have a broad knowledge of the field, and from that point of view does not discern such a wide variety of roles.

On the basis of skills tested in the assessments during the past years, at present we can only see a distinction based on skills. On this basis we recognize two roles, i.e. the enterprise architect, and IT Architect (Solution Architect). The distinction lies in the skills of the architect. While the enterprise architect is able to move at board level, and capable of rendering shape to digital architecture based on a long term vision planning, the ICT or solution architect is capable of filling in sub-areas of the digital architecture.

Besides the knowledge required for both levels, we will particularly look at the R and A facets of the RACK.