How can my iTC come to agreement since we have completely different architectures?

For some products, a good approach can be to use RFCs or other industry standard documents that can provide a common basis for the solution. Since the products are likely working to meet the same set of industry requirements, there should be common ground by using those documents as a reference for understanding.

Another approach, when common architectures are not set to industry standards that has worked before is to have the vendors provide high level diagrams showing their solution to the problem to be shared within the iTC. Obviously these diagrams should not contain any confidential information, but should be detailed enough for the topic at hand to enable everyone to have a general understanding of how the solution could work in that type of system. By seeing how different vendors design their systems to meet the requirements that will be in the cPP, it should be possible to create a “reference platform” that can be used to move forward.

It is important to try to have several vendors provide this information or the reference platform could end up too common to the only vendors who do respond to the call for diagrams.