Enterprise Architecture (EA) and the CSDM framework

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  • Updated March 12, 2026
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    Summary of Enterprise Architecture (EA) and the CSDM framework

    Enterprise Architecture (EA) in ServiceNow provides a comprehensive view of your organization's applications, enabling you to identify redundancies and reduce costs. It integrates closely with the Common Service Data Model (CSDM) framework to align business capabilities, information assets, applications, and technology portfolios for better planning and management.

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    Note that starting with the Xanadu release, the legacy Enterprise Architecture Home page (formerly Application Portfolio Management) is deprecated and replaced by the Enterprise Architecture Workspace Home page, which offers similar features to new users.

    Key Features

    • Business Portfolio: View and assess business capabilities and the applications supporting them, including identification of at-risk applications. Capability mapping establishes relationships between business capabilities and applications.
    • Information Portfolio: Capture and manage asset information as information objects linked to business applications, helping to build a comprehensive application portfolio. This includes tracking data domains, information objects, database instances, and database catalogs.
    • Application Portfolio: Maintain a detailed list of business applications along with attributes like category, manufacturer, and type. Supports evaluation of usability, cost, quality, performance, and risk of applications.
    • Technology Portfolio: Leverage metrics to monitor and manage the usability, cost, quality, performance, and risk associated with technology assets related to business applications.
    • Integration with CSDM: EA uses and manages core CSDM tables, benefiting multiple ServiceNow products by providing a unified, version-agnostic entity representation for technologies, instances, and data used in planning and reporting.

    Practical Considerations for Customers

    • Use the Enterprise Architecture Workspace Home page for new activations to access EA capabilities aligned with the latest CSDM versions (5.0 or later).
    • For customers on earlier CSDM versions (before 5.0), refer to Rome documentation to ensure compatibility and proper implementation.
    • Implement EA in stages alongside the CSDM framework to align business capabilities with applications and technology assets effectively.

    Benefits

    • Gain clear visibility into business and technology portfolios to optimize application usage and reduce redundancies.
    • Improve cost management by identifying and managing at-risk applications and assets.
    • Establish strong relationships between business capabilities and supporting applications to enhance strategic planning and reporting.

    Use Enterprise Architecture to gain a comprehensive understanding of your organization's applications so you can identify redundancies and decrease budgetary costs. The goal of this product view is to help you to understand how Enterprise Architecture key entities work with the core CSDM framework.

    Note:
    If you do not use CSDM 5.0 or later versions, see the Rome documentation for CSDM. For implementing CSDM framework, see Implementing the CSDM framework in stages.

    Enterprise Architecture home page

    Important:

    Starting with the Xanadu release, the legacy Enterprise Architecture (formerly Application Portfolio Management) Home page has been deprecated. However, if you are an existing user of Enterprise Architecture (formerly Application Portfolio Management), you can still view the legacy Home page. If you are a new activation user, the legacy Home page is not available.

    You can leverage the same features provided by the Application Portfolio Management Home page by using the Enterprise Architecture Workspace Home page. To learn more about Enterprise Architecture Workspace, see Enterprise Architecture Workspace.

    The Enterprise Architecture home page organizes many of the CSDM tables used by Enterprise Architecture.
    Business Portfolio

    View the number of defined business capabilities that have been or will be assessed, and the number of business applications that support capabilities but are at-risk.

    For more information about using capability mapping to establish a configuration item (CI) relationship between the business capability and the business applications, see Exploring a business portfolio.

    Information Portfolio

    Capture the asset information as information objects. You can connect the information object to your business applications to create an application portfolio that you can use at any time.

    The information portfolio links to the following data:
    • Data Domains: Total number of records in the Data Domain table [sn_apm_data_domain].
    • Information Objects: Total number of records in the Information Object table [cmdb_ci_information_object].
    • Database Instances: Total number of records in the Database Instance table [cmdb_ci_db_instance].
    • Database Catalogs: Total number of records in the Database Catalog table [cmdb_ci_db_catalog].

    For more information about the information portfolio and the information portfolio model, see [product].

    Application Portfolio

    Track the applications that support your business capabilities and effectively manage them to meet the goals of your organization. The portfolio provides a list of applications with information such as their category, manufacturer, and type. Select Applications to navigate to the list view of business applications in your organization.

    For more information about measuring the usability, cost, quality, performance, and risk of applications, see [product].

    Technology Portfolio

    Use metrics to measure the usability, cost, quality, performance, and risk of applications.

    For more information about technology portfolio management and how it relates to business applications, see Manage the Technology Portfolio Management (TPM) in Enterprise Architecture Workspace.