Ever since it was developed as a universal language for enterprise architecture, ArchiMate has had a small but growing fan group in the architecture community, mostly in the Netherlands. That, however, is changing fast. ArchiMate has been accepted as a standard by The Open Group (of the TOGAF framework), which established the ArchiMate Forum to lead its further development. ArchiMate clearly fills a need in the emerging enterprise architecture profession.
This need is becoming apparent especially in the public sector. Governments are faced with demands from the public to work more efficient and to cut back on bureaucracy. As a result, the enterprise architecture of many public organisations is undergoing substantial change. At the same time, public organisations are increasingly aware of the need to standardise the exchange of architecture descriptions, for three reasons:
- To be able to create a common understanding between collaborating government bodies;
- To avoid dependency of a proprietary architecture language and framework;
- To facilitate external audit of a public organisation's architecture artefacts.
Already many public organisations in countries such as Finland and The Netherlands have adopted ArchiMate as their standard architecture language. Public organisations in other countries are considering following that lead.
IDS Scheer has been supporting the ArchiMate initiative since 2006 and launched its first ArchiMate product in 2007. With ARIS 7.1, ArchiMate has been fully integrated into the ARIS method. This enables organisations to combine high level ArchiMate enterprise architectures with numerous "domain methods" such as UML, BPMN, EPC, ERM, BSC and many others.
I believe that in the next few years we will see broad adoption of ArchiMate in a growing number of European countries, especially within the Public and Finance sectors. ArchiMate will mature further as a language as well, and IDS Scheer will play an important role in that process.
I am very interested to learn about your view on ArchiMate and standardisation in the architecture world. If you would like to learn more about ArchiMate or ARIS ArchiMate Modeler, please drop me a line or leave a comment below.
I think that ArchiMate is fantastic. It's simple; And simple means most people can understand and use it, which is great. I do believe, however, that there needs to be a meeting of ArchiMate and a wider adopted methodology such as TOGAF-- even if it is just a tweak of the meta-model -- to bring ArchiMate into mainstream EA acceptance.
I would love to see some examples of where such an approach has been adopted. If anyone has some examples, please, please share.
Hi Dickson,
ArchiMate is an enterprise architecture framework similar to TOGAF. The main difference is that ArchiMate is much simpler and therefore has a smaller learning curve. It might be true that you can high level TOGAF requirements by applying ArchiMate. But in both cases, you just have a framework, but no concrete tools. That is the point where tools like ARIS come in to help you implement such a framework.
Hi Dickson,
ArchiMate is first and foremost a modeling language. Much like UML is the lingua franca for software modeling, ArchiMate is used to express enterprise architecture models.
ArchiMate can be used as the language to express TOGAF artefacts. It was not designed for use specifically with TOGAF, however. ArchiMate currently also still lacks some of the concepts required to fully describe an EA, such as Objectives, Risks and Governance.
Having said that, ArchiMate is expected to be merged into TOGAF in the next few years. More specifically, it will merge with the Architecture Content Framework (which in turn is based on IAF), since both are meta models for high-level EA modeling. This merger will create a very complete, open modeling language for EA.
ARIS already provides TOGAF, ArchiMate and IAF support (ARIS is certified for all three) from a single integrated repository. So as these standards converge, users need suffer no modeling restrictions while reaping the full benefits of open standards compliance.
-Eric
Yes, esspecially now when there is a comprehensive specification.
I'm curious about two thing related to Archimate as handled by ARIS:
1. How the methods supported by ARIS IT Architect are aligned with Archimate? I know that there is a full mapping of objects but I'm not sure about the connection types
2. What is the reason that all symbols (especially the colours) were changed in the August09 service release? Now they are quite different from the notation not to mention to reading difficulty coming from mixing colours of symbols and the nested icons. And is there a way to get the old symbols back?
This said, the inclusion of complete meta model and matrix together with separate models for each object's connections in the new build is great.
Cheers
Ivo
Hi Ivo,
Glad to hear you like it. Just a quick note to answer your questions.
Q: Alignment with ARIS
A: We mapped each ArchiMate object type to an ARIS object type. This enables you to use existing model types or reports with ArchiMate objects. E.g., you can plan your application landscape with a Process Support Map (available in IT Architect) using Application Components from ArchiMate. Or, you can run standard reports on the Business Processes you defined in ArchiMate.
Concerning connections, we reused existing ARIS connection types wherever possible. But since ArchiMate only defines a small set of highly abstract relationships this was always possible. In such cases we added ArchiMate-specific connection types to the ARIS metamodel.
Q: Symbol appearance
A: We changed the symbol appearance to improve the overall look and feel of the ArchiMate notation in ARIS. As with any symbol in ARIS, you can change the symbol image in the Configuration.
Cheers,
Eric
Hello Eric,
We are in te starting up phase right now. We've ordered de archimate templates at IDS Scheer, but they are not 100% equal to the archimate 1.0 specification. I've tried to change the symbol. But how can I export a symbol from within Aris to .AMF or .EMF format?
Is it possible to deliver me your Archimate v1.0 compliant template?
Cheers,
Ben
Hello,
When will the Archimate 2.0 notation be integrated in the Aris Archimate modeller edition ?
Thanks for answering
Kolja van Horssen
I'm also interested in when ARIS will support ArchImate 2.0, especially the Implementation and Migration Extension Metamodel. What I also would like to know if the Archimate Work Package concept will be reusable on existing ARIS project context diagrams, project schedule diagrams, EPC instance diagrams etc.
Archimate (Work Package) vs. ARIS Program, Project or Task?