For Enterprise Architecture Professionals (Length: 6 pages)

Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

Justifying an enterprise architecture (EA) tools investment continues to be a problem — particularly when compared with just using Microsoft Visio. So what are the alternatives for inexpensive EA tooling? We investigated five scenarios that can provide a lightweight- or limited-coverage EA tool solution, and we found that the cheapest open source solutions today are very limited and only the more expensive solutions deliver EA value. Free downloads — such as TIBCO Software's Business Studio, which has free business process (BP) analysis for a single user — provide some interesting partial solutions. So, are there cheap EA tool solutions? Yes; but architects must understand their limitations from the beginning because migrating to a different EA tool midcourse is often very painful.