Agenda

  • Roll Call (East to West) Name and Institution
  • Call for a Scribe
  • Main Topic - EA Tools Comparison Vendor #01 - Essential Presentation
    • Henry Pruitt, New York University
    • John Mayall, Essential Architecture Services
    • Sarah Smith, Essential Architecture Services
  • Working Group Updates
  • Close

Notes

  • The Essential Project has been around as an open-source project since 2009 and has had a commercial offering since 2017.  The goal here is to enable anyone to do enterprise architecture.
  • EAS value proposition is working in the single-price, transparent-pricing, all-you-can-eat licensing for USD$19,500.
  • Essential became the most-popular open-source enterprise-architecture tool in the world, as the data-management component — alongside Archi for ArchiMate (drawing component).
  • Essential has now made it into the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools:
  • Core features available through the various versions can be seen in the graphic below, noting that there is still a run-it-yourself open-source version available and the fully-featured Essential Cloud version available either to be consumed through software-as-a-service or by running your own Docker-container:
  • There is EAS-facilitated Essential Higher Education User Group (co-chaired by Henry Pruitt (NYU) and Karen Moore (The University of Sydney).  Though that group, the Essential product-management roadmap and features are being shaped to better meet the needs of the EDU communities.
  • Essential is also working with the CAUDIT Higher Education Reference Models Working Group to offer the latest version of the Higher Education Reference Models as an Essential-ready artefact to help folk get up and running.
  • The overall metamodel is well-described at the EAS website, and includes a bunch of domains, like these:
  • There are about 140 supplied views and reports available across the various architecture domains and their intersections:
  • Overall, the premise is "Data In, Insights Out", with many practices integrating data between application catalogues mastered in systems such as their ITSM and Essential through API interfaces, opening the door for the creation of a wide range of views and reports that meet the needs of various key stakeholder audiences:
  • Integration with Essential is either manual and flat-file based or uses APIs — APIs are available in the cloud version of Essential, and there are "eighty or ninety REST endpoints" available in there.

Further Information

Resources

Essential Architecture Services

Gartner

  • Gianni, A., Frangou, A., Steinmetz., A., & Jhawar, A.  (2023) Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools , Gartner Research, Article ID #G00784483, available at https://www.gartner.com/document-reader/document/4947731 — EA tools help envision, model and plan for the future of the enterprise, offering features to continuously evolve business and operating models. Enterprise architecture leaders should select EA tools that support long-term transformation, modernization and innovation goals.
  • Enterprise Architecture Tools Ratings and Reviews: https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/enterprise-architecture-tools

Meeting Details

Participants

Chat Log

07:03:45 From J.J. Du Chateau (Wisconsin) to Everyone:
    We have to re-establish our central time zone rhythm
07:03:57 From Stephanie M Warner to Everyone:
    Reacted to "We have to re-establ..." with 😂
07:04:15 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone:
    I still didn’t intro myself 🙂
07:06:31 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    Scribing is a great and enjoyable service = notes can go into here if folk have edit access to the Itana wiki: https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=292259154
07:07:02 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone:
    beths@uwm.edu - thank you!
07:12:18 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    +1 can testify to the effectiveness of that Essential EDU user group (and, spoiler alert, we're working closely with @sarahsmith to offer the latest version of the Higher Education Reference Models as an Essential-ready artefact to help folk get up and running.
07:12:21 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    Reacted to "+1 can testify to th..." with 🤡
07:12:31 From J.J. Du Chateau (Wisconsin) to Everyone:
    Reacted to "+1 can testify to th..." with ❤️
07:12:34 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    Replying to "+1 can testify to th..."
    
    ^^ what @John Mayall just said!
07:12:42 From J.J. Du Chateau (Wisconsin) to Everyone:
    Reacted to "^^ what @John Mayall..." with 👏
07:12:57 From Dana Miller I UTA to Everyone:
    Reacted to "+1 can testify to th..." with 👍
07:21:17 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone:
    Reacted to "+1 can testify to th..." with 👍
07:28:46 From Chris Colón to Everyone:
    I recall that there is a way to create or edit our own views but I don’t recall how. Do you have a KB for that?
07:29:29 From J.J. Du Chateau (Wisconsin) to Everyone:
    Have to leave early. Thanks all.
07:30:14 From Ashish Pandit to Everyone:
    What is the overlap between other CMDB specific applications and EAS? In other word, do you still need CMDB tools?
07:31:21 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    Thee "proposals" feel like a selection of planned responses to a certain change (e.g., a regulatory change).  Do folk use this to support scenario-based planning, or is there other "what-if" capability in the product?
07:37:47 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    ...and of course _everybody_ here should be using the HERM! — for the avoidance of any doubt, the latest V3 release is available at https://library.educause.edu/resources/2021/9/the-higher-education-reference-models
07:43:27 From Louis King (Yale University) to Everyone:
    Is there a way to structure a data exercise for a particular user group. For example a process that informs service owners to update fields A, B, C… and tracks whether they have certified the data yet or not?
07:44:41 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone:
    Reacted to "...and of course _ev..." with ❤️
07:45:24 From Ashish Pandit to Everyone:
    Is this tool available to New2EA cohort?
07:46:44 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    Playbook = https://enterprise-architecture.org/resources/essential-playbook/
07:48:00 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    Replying to "Is this tool availab..."
    
    Not specifically, though there is the open-source edition available to everybody. Maybe there is a discussion to have for a future cohort?
07:48:26 From Chris Colón to Everyone:
    Is there a way to create our own views based on the existing ones?
07:48:50 From Dana Miller I UTA to Everyone:
    Reacted to "Playbook = https://e..." with 👍
07:52:23 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    ...cool!
07:53:14 From Dana Miller I UTA to Everyone:
    Reacted to "Not specifically, th..." with 👍
07:54:06 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    [only if there is time after @Chris Colón] what about transition-state architectures like, say, "we need to migrate everything off of Oracle Java" --- there was mention of "for example if .NET is going away", and it's what-will-we-look-like-after-that-work-is-done view i'm interested in here.
07:58:17 From Todd Schaefer to Everyone:
    Thank you for the excellent demo!
07:58:27 From Dana Miller I UTA to Everyone:
    Great Demo!
07:59:51 From Louis King (Yale University) to Everyone:
    Sarah, that was an awesome demo. You are so quick and fluid. Well done.
08:00:10 From jeff kennedy to Everyone:
    Reacted to "Sarah, that was an a..." with 😍
08:00:20 From Beth Schaefer to Everyone:
    Thank you Henry and Sarah! This was an excellent demo for our community today!
08:00:20 From sarahsmith to Everyone:
    Replying to "Sarah, that was an a..."
    
    Thank you!
08:00:29 From Stephanie M Warner to Everyone:
    Thank you!  Wonderful demo.



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