Providing an assist to IT shops looking to implement an enterprise architecture, The Open Group on Monday is offering is offering a tool to help with putting TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) 9 into action.

Donated by Capgemini, the TOGAF Customizer tool is a free, open source technnology based on the Eclipse Process Framework. Users can more easily align enterprise architecture practices with TOGAF 9 and develop organization-specific versions, Open Group said.

"One of the things that we wanted to do in The Open Group community was really to augment the traditional Open Group [publication] mechanisms with a tool that would allow a user of TOGAF to really pick up the TOGAF method" and customize it, said Mike Turner, enterprise architect at Capgemini.

Plugging into the Eclipse IDE, the tool contains TOGAF 9 content in a structured and editable form, including guidelines and checklists as well as materials accommodating the Architecture Development Method in the framework.  Users also can use the tool to integrate TOGAF with other enterprise architecture frameworks such as Zachman.

The tool is a desktop client that publishes HTML output that can be edited; it will generate a Web site for user reference.

Specific features of the tool include:

• Constructs and tasks to enable processes to be defined with related content such as outputs, inputs and roles.
• A supporting editor to make changes to the standard framework.
• A content management system for group collaboration, editing and versioning.
• A plug-in architecture for adding content packages such as document templates.

TOGAF 9 was launched in February.