The Windchill runtime architecture, illustrated below, is a three-tier application designed and optimized for the deployment of business information applications. The client tier is the presentation layer of the architecture. This tier uses commercial web browsers executing a combination of HTML, JavaScript, and Java applets to accomplish discrete user tasks.

The next tier, the application server tier, provides the business logic that supports business transactions processing. The HTTP Server (powered by Apache) or one of the commercial HTTP servers (such as IIS), and the Windchill method servers provide these functions.

The third tier provides a persistence function. The persistence tier uses an Object Relational Database Management System (ORDBMS) to store structured and unstructured data.