Open Group Releases Eclipse Tool To Ease TOGAF Development
The Open Group, a technology agnostic consortium focused on open standards and interoperability, this week released a tool intended to simplify use of TOGAF 9, a standard framework for enterprise architecture.
TOGAF Customizer is a tool based on the Eclipse Process Framework (EPF). EPF is the Eclipse Foundation’s open source framework for developing tools for process authoring, configuration and publishing.
Developed and donated by IT services firm Capgemini, TOGAF Customizer includes all of the content of The Open Group Architecture Framework 9, which was released in February.
Capgemini developed the TOGAF Customizer to improve usability, which was limited because the contents of TOGAF 9 were available in hard copy, PDF, and HTML, said Mike Turner, an enterprise architect with Capgemini, and an Open Group member.
"We wanted to provide TOGAF in a form where it can be edited directly by organizations and extended by organizations so they can more rapidly get to the state where TOGAF fits the purpose for their organization,” Turner said, in an interview
TOGAF Customizer is a plug-in that can be downloaded into an architect’s EPF tool. The plug-in architecture lets developer create and link new content such as document templates into TOGAF. Also the editor lets users edit TOGAF content and customize it.
"The new customizer contains all the content of TOGAF 9 in a structured and editable form, including guidelines, concepts, and checklists, as well as detailed work breakdown structures for the framework’s new and improved architecture development method (ADM)," said Interarbor Solutions analyst Dana Gardner, in a blog posting. "In a nutshell, moving TOGAF into an industry-standard IDE brings a Web 2.0 flavor to the document, making it akin to a wiki."
TOGAF Customizer can be accessed here.
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Jeffrey Schwartz is executive editor of Redmond Channel Partner and an editor-at-large at Redmond magazine. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreySchwartz.