INDUSTRY

Popkin Software, a leading, NYC-based developer of enterprise architecture tools and services, today announced integrated support for the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) FEA Reference Models within its System Architect enterprise architecture and modeling tool suite. Popkin's new Integrated Reference Model Architect (iRMA) option gives federal agencies the ability to consolidate their architecture and compliance efforts into one central tool suite and automate the gathering and generation of architecture information to meet OMB compliance requirements. iRMA is designed to fully support the agency capital planning and investment control process. iRMA generates reports that can be used to satisfy requirements of OMB Exhibits 53 and 300. By linking elements of the reference models to investments, technologies, services and functions of the agency, users can develop business cases for proposed investments. Business cases are strengthened by the alignment between the FEA reference models and proposed agency initiatives. "iRMA follows through on Popkin's commitment to give agencies the tools to focus on using their architecture for improved analysis and decision-making and to better manage their compliance reporting efforts," said Jan Popkin, CEO, Popkin Software. "We have worked with multiple agencies during the past year to develop a solution that streamlines OMB compliance reporting for federal agencies. The System Architect/iRMA tool set delivers a single, integrated solution for agencies to fully integrate their OMB reporting with their enterprise architecture program." iRMA is part of Popkin's newly released System Architect v10 tool suite, a single, integrated tool suite for developing an enterprise architecture. System Architect enables federal agencies to capture, analyze and visually communicate information about how their systems, applications and business processes interrelate. Organizations can then share this information as a means to improve decision-making about technology and agency goal/mission alignment. When combined with System Architect's new Explorer feature, iRMA offers a unique reporting and visualization capability. Beginning with the strategic and mission-level information contained in the Performance Reference Model, users can visually see and analyze relationships and links down to the internal process or deployed system. Users can see relationships among systems, the Service Components they deliver, and the Operational Measurement Indicators used to measure their effectiveness. This visualization enables agency CIOs and executives to clearly understand how technology is supporting their goals and mission and to analyze the impact of technology investments and process improvements. iRMA offers the ability to import current and future releases of the reference models by the Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office (FEAPMO). Reference models are released as an XML document and posted on the FEAPMO.gov Web site. Users import the FEA reference models in XML format using iRMA. The import facility supports the import of future releases of the reference models and preserves all existing links to older model elements. Agencies can use iRMA to keep up-to-date versions of the reference models in their architecture encyclopedias. iRMA supports all currently available reference models for all aspects of an architecture, including the Business Reference Model, Service Component Reference Model, Technical Reference Model and the Performance Reference Model. iRMA is fully customizable to enable users to capture the aspects of their architecture that extend beyond the standard features. System Architect also provides a rich set of additional reporting and publishing facilities for documenting models and performing impact analysis. A new Web Information Publishing feature enables agencies to automate the sharing of the information with stakeholders via the Web. iRMA is available now as an option to System Architect. Pricing and specifications are available at http://www.popkin.com/.