Copyright ©2010 Enterprise Architecture Solutions Ltd.

The goal of the Essential Project is to promote the value that enterprise architecture can bring to organisations of all sizes and experience by lowering barriers to entry with a free, simple, productive and, most importantly, effective set of supporting tools.

The Essential Project is the collective name for a set of open source,

Enterprise Architecture support tools that have been developed for use in

conjunction with a variety of Enterprise Architecture approaches and

frameworks (e.g. TOGAF, DoDAF, Zachman).

These tools are focused solely on providing only those capabilities that are

"essential" to maximising the value of enterprise architecture; helping

organisations manage and analyse the knowledge needed to make

decisions that impact or are impacted by their enterprise architecture.

Designed for simplicity and ease of use, with no up-front or on-going fees, it

is hoped that the Essential Project will encourage people to adopt

Enterprise Architecture.

The Essential Project is not only about the tools. It provides a useful, active

forum for sharing ideas and experiences of applying Enterprise Architecture

practices to real world business problems; what works and what doesn't,

best practices, hints and tips etc. Our aim is to move Enterprise Architecture

away from its often-perceived ivory tower - of benefit only to large,

complex organisations - to a necessary and valuable capability in any

organisation.

What is the Essential Project?

The Essential Meta-Model is a

framework-independent

language (i.e. set of semantic

definitions) for capturing

knowledge related to the

building blocks and

relationships of an enterprise

The Essential Project contains:

Essential Architecture

Manager is a knowledge

repository and reporting tool

for capturing and then

querying information based

on the Essential Meta-Model

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The free, open-source EA solution

2 Copyright ©2010 Enterprise Architecture Solutions Ltd.

Developed from over ten years of applying enterprise architecture practices

The Essential Meta-Model is, in effect, an ontology for the domain

of Enterprise Architecture that has been developed from over ten

years of applying enterprise architecture practices with a variety

of EA frameworks and tools.

Importantly, it does not represent an attempt to supersede or

conflict with well-established EA frameworks and their associated

meta-models. Rather, the intention is to provide a comprehensive

and extensible set of concepts and relationships, with clear

semantics that can be easily mapped to the concepts, activities

and tools of the industry standard frameworks.

The Core Meta-Model concepts and relationships are based on

what is fast-becoming a standard twelve-box grid; with layers

representing the areas of architecture to be understood and rows

representing the levels of abstraction from which this

understanding is to be viewed.

More specifically, the architecture layers defined are:

o Business - the objectives, capabilities, people and processes

of an enterprise

o Application - the functional behaviour provided by

technology systems in support of business processes

o Information - the structured and unstructured information that

support business processes, is managed by applications and is

transmitted/stored using technology

o Technology - the software and hardware technology used to

implement applications and transmit/store information.

Essential Meta Model

Ontology for Enterprise Architecture

The abstraction views defined are:

o Conceptual View - the capabilities and

concepts that represent the

fundamental elements needed to

meet the objectives of an enterprise

(Strategic Agenda)

o Logical View - the approaches taken

to realise the capabilities and

concepts of the Conceptual View

(Tactical Agenda)

o Physical View - the implementation of

the approaches described in the

Logical View (Operational Agenda).

In addition, there are a number of Support

Meta-Model concepts and relationships

provided that enable management and

governance processes that make use of

the knowledge captured in the Core Meta-

Model, as can be seen in the diagram

above.

3 Copyright ©2010 Enterprise Architecture Solutions Ltd.

Easy to learn, capable of yielding results in days rather than months

Essential Architecture Manager is a toolset that is focused solely

on supporting enterprise architecture practices, applied in the

context of a variety of business and IT management processes

(e.g. strategy management, IT governance, solution delivery,

service delivery). In addition, particular emphasis has been

placed on creating a toolset that is:

o Low maintenance, in terms of both the architecture model

and the underlying tool platform

o Easy to learn, flexible and intuitive to non-technical users

o Capable of yielding results in days or weeks, rather than

months.

The toolset offers all the required features of an enterprise

architecture tool as defined by the Gartner Group*:

o A repository

o A meta model that supports business, information and

technology viewpoints as well as the solution architecture

o Provides support within the repository for relationships

among and between the objects in the above viewpoints

and solution architecture

o The ability to create or import models and artifacts

o The ability to extract repository information to support

various stakeholder needs.

Essential Architecture

Manager

Essential Meta Model Reference implementation

Fundamentally, these features can be

grouped into two areas of functionality;

functions that support users in the modelling

of an enterprise, and functions that provide

users with discrete views of this model in

support of reporting and analysis. This

grouping is reflected in the underlying design

of the toolset in that it comprises two main

components, which separate the capture of

information from the analysis:

o Essential Modeller, providing support for

capturing and maintaining the enterprise

architecture model

o Essential Viewer, responsible for

generating reports that allow users to

view and analyse the enterprise

architecture model.

* Enterprise Architecture Tool definition source: Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools, 1Q06

4 Copyright ©2010 Enterprise Architecture Solutions Ltd.

Open Source Software

In the best traditions of open source,

the components of the Essential

Architecture Manager have been

created using a number of well-

established and proven open source

technologies.

Essential Modeller

The Essential Modeller provides a simple, primarily form-based means of capturing, managing and sharing an enterprise architecture model.

Essential Viewer

The Essential Viewer provides a flexible and extensible means of generating views on the model captured using the Essential Modeller. A number of standard reports are provided by default, however, the Essential Viewer is explicitly designed to allow organisations to define and publish custom views and reports to meet their individual needs.

Copyright ©2010 Enterprise Architecture Solutions Ltd.

The Essential Project - created and sponsored by Enterprise Architecture Solutions Ltd.

www.enterprise-architecture.com

Enterprise Architecture Solutions Ltd is registered in England and Wales: 04097721. Registered Office: 76 High Street, Newport Pagnell, Milton Keynes, MK16 8AQ.

Licensing

The Essential Project toolset is open

source and has been used and

tested extensively in a production

environment. These tools are

available for use by any individual or

organisation free of charge, with no

initial or on-going support or

maintenance charges, under the

GNU General Public License.

Professional Support and Consulting

Support and consulting services work with your organisation to help you

support your Enterprise Architecture initiatives with the best use of the

Essential Project tools. Examples of the consulting and support services

offered include:

o Platform installation and configuration

o Practical application of the Essential Project tools to meet specific

objectives, such as

o Business and IT strategy development and management

o Solution architecture design

o Project / programme management

o Application/technology rationalisation and cost reduction

o Strategic application and technology selection

o Legacy transitioning and decommissioning

o Outsourcing / "rightsourcing" strategy development

o IT governance

o Enterprise architecture process and organisation design (including

ongoing mentoring and support).

Find out more about The Essential Project

For more information visit the website at www.enterprise-architecture.org or contact the project via email at team@enterprise-architecture.org.