The Year of the Horse

It’s the Chinese Year of the Horse, and it seems that Archi is already racing ahead in the download stakes. Archi 2.6 was released exactly 4 weeks ago on January 9th and I’m happy to report that the rate of downloads has doubled. In that 4 week period Archi has been downloaded over 2,000 times. This figure represents a subset of the actual visitors to the Archi website. In the same 4 week period there were over 5,000 visits, 3,500 unique visitors and 13,000 page views. These are incredible figures considering that I only very recently launched this website.

It’s interesting to study the website data provided by Google Analytics. Most visitors to this site have been from Europe, with the Netherlands being the front runner followed closely by the UK, and then the US. We can also see from the data who are the strong favourites, and who are the up and coming runners. France, Germany, and Belgium lead the way from Europe, while there has been increased interest from Russia, China, and India – all areas for growth and potential new markets. I shall be analysing this data more closely in the coming weeks.

horse

But numbers are just part of the picture. It’s also interesting to see how popular Archi has become as the tool of choice for delivering ArchiMate training by some commercial training organisations. I would like to think that this is because of Archi’s ease of use and elegant simplicity, but it may also be because Archi is free.

My immediate concern is to strengthen the Archi and ArchiMate community by adding new resources to the website. You may have already noticed the “coming soon” “Tips and Tricks” teaser on the Resources page. I propose to create a hub to share Archi models and modelling patterns, with perhaps a means to rate and comment on these, and to serve as a place to discuss ArchiMate best practices. If you have any suggestions as to how you think this would be best implemented please let me know.

Clearly, Archi is being used by many architects, trainers, and EA students throughout the world (a recent download came from Mongolia). This popularity is driving the number of feature requests we are receiving, particularly in relation to multi-user support. I’m pleased to say that there has been a great deal of renewed interest from developers. As I mentioned before, Jean-Baptiste Sarrodie from France is leading the way exploring possibilities for sharing and merging models. My thanks are due to him for his encouragement and getting the message out. Judging by some comments on the Archi forums and elsewhere we may be seeing the beginnings of an Archi developer community. With more people contributing, the possibilities for Archi increase.

Fulfilling the meaning of my name, I will try to continue in my role as the steward, groom, or ostler of Archi. Thanks for your continuing support.

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