The Essential Project has recently received a couple of very favourable reviews.  The Journal of Enterprise Architecture completed a thorough review and evaluation of the Essential Architecture Manager Tool, and one of the leading analyst firms reviewed Essential as part of a report on open source software.

New graphical viewing capabilities for Essential Architecture Manager are now available. A Visio export tool, recently contributed by Clint Cooper, enables the contents of the Essential repository to be exported to and viewed in Microsoft Visio. Adding to this, the latest release of Essential Architecture Manager brings views of the models that are defined graphically to the viewer environment.

The Essential Project Team are pleased to announce that the new wizard-based installer for Essential Architecture Manager is now available. This simplifies the installation process, performing all the unpacking and installation of the Essential Project software components for both stand-alone and multi-user installations. The installer also provides the capability to generate automatic installation scripts, e.g. when installing on multiple user workstations in a multi-user scenario.

The new, version 1.2, release of Essential Architecture Manager is delivered in a single download package which contains both the Essential Project software components and the installer.

Over the past couple of months we have talked to a number of analysts, and OVUM Butler Group have recently released a Technology Audit of the Essential Project.  We had a very interesting session with their EA analyst, Mark Blowers, discussing both the tool and the open source approach.

Mark states that OVUM Butler Group ‘particularly likes the way the main meta-model is not over complicated by the use a Support Meta-Model, where concepts and relationships are created, exploiting knowledge captured in the Core Meta-Model, to assist management and governance capabilities, such as Strategy Management, Change Management, and Service Delivery. Additional support concepts are planned, including Security and Information Lifecycle Management.’