I’ve heard from John P. Zachman that the first vendor product will be submitted for Zachman Certified status.

Zachman International announces today it’s working relationship with Sybase® to demonstrate PowerDesigner® 15 as a Zachman Certified™ – Enterprise Tool for implementing The Zachman Framework™.

Enterprise Architects have been clamoring for consistency in Enterprise Architecture and for ways to implement The Zachman Framework™ for many years. Sybase® has come up with an answer by seeking Zachman Certification in their flagship modeling and metadata management tool for Enterprise Architecture: PowerDesigner® 15.

With PowerDesigner® 15’s great strength in enterprise information management, it seemed a natural fit to evolve that strength into full-scale business planning using Enterprise Architecture and The Zachman Framework™. They have sought certification of their tool to support the Zachman Enterprise Architecture concept of building primitive models in order to derive business implementation composites. “Having a partner like the Zachman group, allows us to accelerate our move into Enterprise Architecture with the world-recognized authority on the subject.” - David Dichmann, Sr. Product Manager, Design Tools, Sybase®, Inc.

Zachman International has long been educating the community about transforming and integrating the primitive models of The Zachman Framework™ into implementation solutions. Many methodology experts have had a hard time envisioning that The Zachman Framework™ is about creating composite models for implementation from design primitives. Without integration and transformation, which allows the building of composite models, The Zachman Framework™ appears to them as a dis-joint set of classes. Now with PowerDesigner® 15 in the first phase of certification, implementation is attainable from a Tool perspective. “For the first time, we are seeing a vendor willing to step up to the plate and take Enterprise Architecture into the Business Design domain as it was originally intended to be, far beyond Information Systems and Technology.” - John A. Zachman, CEO, Zachman International, Inc.

Phase one of Zachman Certified™ – Enterprise Tool designation is directed at the Scope lists (Row 1) and the Inventory models (What Column) with their corresponding integrations and transformation matrices for analysis. This working relationship has allowed Zachman and Sybase® to assist a number of common customers to integrate PowerDesigner® 15 and The Zachman Framework™ to move their businesses ahead in stressful economic conditions.

Sybase® will demonstrate this proof of concept in the Zachman Modeling Workshops in Stockholm in May and Denver in June.

I believe that it is important that Zachman (John A. Zachman) work towards formal certifications of tools and other solutions since there are some vendor staff who have been claiming endorsements/certifications by John.  Having a formal program will clear up market confusion.

Press Release: Sybase® and The Zachman Framework