Open-source enterprise architecture tools

Open-source enterprise architecture tools are a class of enterprise architecture tool that are licensed such that they can be freely used, extended and modified by anyone. Traditionally, enterprise architecture tools are proprietary based and require a license and sometimes a support contract to be purchased. Some open source EA Tools are also free of charge.

Overview

Enterprise architecture is concerned with understanding the detail of an organisation, and the links between them. The organisation is usually broken down into a number of layers; business, information, application and technology and these are viewed through a number of abstractions, conceptual, logical, and physical. The information is captured and modelled to allow senior management to report on and analyse it, allowing effective and timely decision making regarding tactical projects and strategic change initiatives across the organisation.

Enterprise architecture tools are used to aid the enterprise architect in a number of ways; allowing them to capture information regarding the enterprise, undertake modelling in all domains, capture the links between the various artefacts, provide a meta model to standardise the capture and hold this information in a repository to allow interrogation of the information, for example in the form of standard or ad-hoc reports.

Traditionally, enterprise architecture tools are proprietary and have a reputation for being expensive to purchase, customise and run. In a 2009 report ^[1] over 50% of respondents claimed not to be using a commercial EA Tool, with many making use of Visio, PowerPoint, Excel and/or SharePoint only and a 2008 survey ^[2] indicated the cost of licensing as the main barrier for EA Tool adoption.

There are a number of underlying issues for organisations that use Visio, PowerPoint, Excel and/or SharePoint rather than an EA Tool; the information captured quickly becomes out of date, the ability to quickly and easily re-draw a different view of the information is not available, the meta-model must be manually enforced.

Requirements of an enterprise architecture tool

The Gartner Group ^[3] has defined the requirements of an EA tool as being:-

• A repository
• A meta model that supports business, information and technology viewpoints as well as the solution architecture
• Provides support within the repository for relationships among and between the objects in the above viewpoints and solution architecture
• The ability to create or import models and artefacts
• The ability to extract repository information to support various stakeholder needs.

Open-source examples

Recently a number of Open Source EA Tools have appeared, providing an alternative to the commercial tools on the market. There are two main tools that provide the modelling capabilities necessary, combined with the means for multi user capture of the architecture and the ability to extract and report on the information captured. These are Essential and iteraplan.

The Essential Project

Essential is a free, open source tool by Enterprise Architecture Solutions Ltd, a UK-based EA consulting company. It launched its first version in March 2009.

The Essential Project has been developed for use in conjunction with a variety of Enterprise Architecture approaches and Enterprise Architecture framework. It comprises:-

• The Essential Meta-Model, a framework-independent set of semantic definitions of the building blocks and relationships of an enterprise, spanning business, information, IT applications and technology platforms.

• The Essential Architecture Manager, a knowledge repository and reporting tool for capturing and then querying information based on the Essential Meta-Model. The tool can be installed in either stand alone or multi user mode, with multi user the use of a data base such as MySQL is required. An integration tab to allow import and export of the architectural data is provided, as are a wizard based installer and update scripts.

• An open community process where community members can share their knowledge and contribute to the development of the tool and EA in general.

Following its open source ethos, The Essential Project is built on the open source Protégé repository and is available under the GNU General Public License.

iteraplan

iteraplan is an open source community EA management platform with roadmapping capabilities by iteratec, a software and consulting company. The new release, 2.8, was delivered in April 2011 and includes new features such as fuzzy search, UML/XMI export, and new graphical reports.

iteraplan is also available as an Enterprise Edition, which is built on the same code base as the open source project but adds Oracle and MySQL support to allow multi use mode, roles management including LDAP connection and an importing interface. The Enterprise Edition is license-free, but does not provide source code and a full maintenance/support contract is required.

Customer references are mainly in Germany and Austria. The webinterface of iteraplan is available in English, German, Spanish, French, and further internationalization efforts are fairly recent, with documents and its Web site supporting English language now.

Analyst view

Recent surveys ^[4] have shown that over half of all Enterprise Architecture initiatives are not using commercial EA tools. In fact many still rely on Visio, PowerPoint and Excel as their EA tool of choice.

A Forrester Report ^[5] has shown that there are many reasons for this slow uptake in EA tools, but one solution that is quickly gathering pace is Open Source EA Tools. Not only do open source tools give savings in license costs, but they also provide many other benefits such as:

• Removing the need to cost justify an expensive tool before use
• Concentrating on the needs of an EA team, rather than expensive features that many EA teams will not use for some time, if at all
• Providing an open and extensible meta-model that is easy to customise if required
• Providing an openness and ease of customisation in reporting that commercial tools are unable to provide
• Allowing EA teams to actively contribute to and shape the tool

Butler Group ^[6] believes it would be unwise to embark on enterprise architecture, and impossible to fully realise the benefits, without assistance from a tool specifically designed to support such an approach and they suggest an open source alternative is something that organisations should consider if lack of financial resources is preventing the use of a tool.

Notes

1. ^ Forrester April 7, 2009, “Enterprise Architecture Tool Trends: Slow Adoption But Expanding Usage” report
2. ^ Infosys Enterprise Architecture survey 2008
3. ^ Enterprise Architecture Tool definition source: Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools, 1Q06
4. ^ Forrester April 7, 2009, “Enterprise Architecture Tool Trends: Slow Adoption But Expanding Usage” report
5. ^ Forrester December 2009 ‘Open Source Solutions for EA Tool Needs’
6. ^ Butler Group Essential Project Technology Audit