Last week, at the invitation of Andrew Josey, I attended and co-presented at The Open Group’s October Conference in Paris, France. My co-presenter was Jean-Baptiste Sarrodie of Arismore. The title of our presentation was “ArchiMate® 3.0, Archi 4, and Open Source – Open Standards in Action”. The following is the official summary of our presentation:
ArchiMate® 3.0 was released in June 2016. This latest version of the language represents an important evolution of the popular open standard that is used by Enterprise Architects globally. It is now possible to model the strategy of the enterprise using new concepts such as Capability and Resources, and also to model the physical world with the Equipment, Material, and Factory concepts.
Archi® is an open source modelling tool that provides an open and free implementation of the ArchiMate language. It has been downloaded many thousands of times since its introduction in 2010 and provides a low cost to entry solution to users who may be making their first steps in the ArchiMate modelling language, or who are looking for a free, cross-platform ArchiMate modelling tool for their company.
In this presentation we show that Archi has been an important enabler of ArchiMate globally, why it’s important to continue to develop and support the tool, and the challenges faced in implementing ArchiMate 3.0. We also discuss the importance of open source and open implementations for an open standard. We will provide a review of progress and new features in the next version of Archi, and progress on its implementation of The Open Group’s ArchiMate exchange format.
Furthermore, we will provide an example of how Open Source developments based on Archi within Arismore have made a DevOps approach to Architecture work possible and allowed the company to rethink their EA practice.
The key takeaways of the presentation were billed as:
- ArchiMate 3.0 represents an important evolution in the language
- Archi continues to provide an open and accessible implementation of ArchiMate lowering the barrier to entry
- The latest version of Archi and its associated initiatives represent new developments that benefit all stakeholders and continue to promote and support ArchiMate and Enterprise Architecture
So, how did the presentation go?
Well, had I been doing the presentation on my own I would probably have defaulted to the usual informative, but slightly boring, PowerPoint slide deck, and that would have been that. Fortunately, Jean-Baptiste (J-B) had the idea of livening up the party by using a hand-crafted Sozi presentation and so, with the vehicle of our improvised double-act, the delivery was a lot of fun and, I think, well received by the audience. Here’s the static overview image of the presentation that J-B created:
In our joint presentation, J-B and I gave a brief summary of Archi’s history, how it started from a modest UK-funded project with the aim of helping staff in UK universities making their first steps in EA and modelling, and how it has developed over the last six years to a position where it is downloaded around 5,000 times a month. J-B made an important point that probably applies to many ArchiMate users – if it had not been for Archi he would not have started to use the ArchiMate language. And, I assume, if J-B had not started with Archi and ArchiMate, perhaps Arismore might not have got on board with it, and we would not be doing this presentation. And I think this was one of our key messages – that Archi has been an important enabler for the uptake of ArchiMate, and perhaps EA in general.
I made the point that, as a free and open source tool, Archi is not in competition with any other ArchiMate-based tool. We are not in the business of exclusion, but, rather, as part of our “Archi Philosophy” we aim to be inclusive. In fact, it has been mentioned several times to me that if Archi, or at least any open source ArchiMate tool, had not existed then the tooling ecosystem would probably not be as active as it is now. We aim to open up and enable the market for all stakeholders. There is room for everybody, and an open source offering is essential for an open standard. Furthermore, as part of this inclusive vision, the ArchiMate Exchange Format has proven to be a key enabler for many end users who need to ensure that their ArchiMate data is accessible, transparent and interoperable between toolsets and services. I’ve written about the importance of the ArchiMate Exchange Format in my previous blog post and, at the conference in Paris, it was obvious how important this has become.
Raul Mario Abril Jimenez of the European Commission and the European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA) project was also presenting at the conference and he told me that the ArchiMate Exchange Format was a key decider in the project’s use of ArchiMate. The EIRA project has even taken things a step further by developing a plug-in add-on for Archi – the Cartography Tool. In the presentation I emphasised how Archi and the Exchange Format has enabled rich cross-pollination of ideas, methods, and tooling enhancements, and so it’s great to see this in action.
J-B gave us a quick overview of some of the new features in ArchiMate 3.0, and I spoke about some of the challenges these have presented in implementation in Archi, and the importance of sustaining and supporting the development of Archi and associated initiatives given the huge number of end users and stakeholders. This led us onto some exciting news:
Archi 4 beta with support for ArchiMate 3.0 is available now!
I’ve been working on implementing the main new features of ArchiMate 3.0 in Archi over the last few months. There’s still a few loose ends, and documentation and testing to do, but please give the beta a try. You can download it from the Archi website.
J-B spoke about his vision for the future of Archi, EA and the ArchiMate ecosystem, taking ideas from DevOps and applying them to Archi and ArchiMate tooling – something he calls “ArchOps”. You can see from the presentation summary image above where J-B is going with this. Hopefully, J-B will elaborate upon these ideas in a separate blog post.
So, I think it was a positive and fun presentation. At least J-B and I had a lot of positive feedback afterwards. And, for the record, here are my personal key takeaways from attending the conference:
- Andrew Josey and The Open Group are doing a great job curating the ArchiMate language as an open standard, whilst managing a variety of (sometimes conflicting) stakeholder concerns
- Everyone I met was very generous in their praise of Archi and what it has achieved
- I am amazed at the way end users have been empowered by access to open source tooling, open standards, open data, and their positivity in sharing and working together
You can view the full Sozi presentation here.
