Serge posses the question in his post, Enterprise Architecture Tools: Why are IBM, HP, Microsoft, CA and others absent? Unfortunately I do not have a good answer for that. However, we are working on some projects (not products) that may help lead us in that direction.
I am building a Enterprise Architecture reference implementation. This will be similar to a reference architecture. The Enterprise Architecture Reference implementation that will have a core set of assets avail for free to everyone.
I am building this out using the following technologies:
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)
Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF)
Direct integration with Office Clients (Word, Excel, Outlook)
Forms Services
SQL Server
I will be enabling several EA processes through the reference architecture. To name a few that are based on the four based EA tool capabilities:
EA Integration into the SDLC
Providing a better way to document and manage our architectures
EA Metrics generation
EA Community (Blogs, Wiki, E-Mail Guidance and patterns)
Linking key processes together (System design, Incident Mgmt, Config Mgmt, Risk Mgmt, Service Mgmt, etc.)
I would love to hear this communities thoughts on this topic and some usage patterns that you are struggling with. I presented on EA tooling at MS TechEd this year check out my blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/06/05/my-enterprise-architecture-session-at-teched-2007.aspx) on how I define the EA tooling space. More to come later of course. But this is your chance to get something build for free 🙂
Please keep in mind, my goal is to provide a way to make our EA efforts easier and solve some of the low hanging fruit, propose some alternative ideas, and provide some more practical guidance and tooling that will obviously be a starting point. This is not a full fledged EA tool by any stretch (without customization).
More to come, stay tuned…
To see what was in previous reference architectures see the Loan Origination Reference Architecture Framework located here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/architecture/orlos
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