Arktik

Enterprise Architecture Without the Enterprise Price Tag

By Arthur van der Knaap — June 2026

The Problem I Kept Running Into

I've spent years working in the Nordics at the intersection of architecture and software delivery. Across different organisations — from lean Nordic tech companies to large enterprises — I kept encountering the same friction: enterprise architecture tools are priced per seat, and those seats are expensive.

In practice, this means the tooling is reserved for a small group of enterprise architects at the governance level. Solution architects — the people who actually work alongside development teams, translating business requirements into technical designs — rarely get access. The per-seat cost simply can't be justified for everyone who needs to do architecture work.

This creates a gap. Enterprise architects govern the models in a repository that solution architects can't access, or can only view in read-only mode. Solution architects resort to informal tools — PowerPoint, Miro, draw.io — to communicate designs to their teams. The result: two parallel worlds of architectural documentation that don't connect.

The Freedom Problem

Even when solution architects do get access to the enterprise tool, there's a second problem: governance.

Enterprise architecture repositories are necessarily governed. They enforce naming conventions, folder structures, approval workflows, and change processes. This governance is appropriate for the enterprise-level baseline — it ensures consistency and auditability at scale.

But solution architects need something different. They need to sketch quickly. They need to explore options, model alternatives, and iterate designs with their development team — often in the same sprint. Formal governance at this stage slows them down and discourages experimentation.

What solution architects need is a tool where they can:

• Model freely without approval workflows
• Share diagrams with developers instantly
• Iterate designs rapidly during sprint planning
• Use the same ArchiMate notation as the enterprise tool — so work can be promoted upstream when ready

That last point is critical. The tool needs to speak the same language as the enterprise platform, so that designs created at the solution level can eventually flow into the governed repository — not as re-drawn diagrams, but as structured models.

What Is Arktik?

Arktik is a browser-based ArchiMate® 3.x modelling tool — completely free, and it will stay free. No registration required. It's cloud-hosted — you open a URL and start working. No installation, no licence keys, no waiting for IT to provision access. No data is saved to the server; all your models are stored locally in your browser, giving you full control over your architectural data.

It reads and writes the ArchiMate Open Exchange Format, which means it interoperates natively with tools like Archi, BiZZdesign, ADOIT, and others that support the standard. Models created in Arktik can be imported into the enterprise repository when designs are ready to be formalised.

The tool is designed to be fast and unobtrusive. Open a browser tab, open your model, make your changes. Share the URL with a developer and they can see the diagram immediately — no licence required to view.

Two Ways to Use Arktik

Bridging Enterprise and Solution Architecture

Solution architects don't work in a vacuum. They need the enterprise context — the reference architectures, the capability maps, the existing application landscape — as a starting point for their designs. Without it, they risk building solutions that duplicate existing capabilities or conflict with the target state.

Today, this context transfer often happens informally: a PDF export of a diagram, a screenshot in a Confluence page, or a verbal walkthrough. The solution architect then recreates the relevant parts in whatever tool they use — losing the structural data, the relationships, and the traceability back to the enterprise model.

With Arktik as a companion tool, the workflow becomes bidirectional:

From enterprise to solution

1. Export the relevant views and elements from the enterprise repository as an Open Exchange Format file
2. Open in Arktik — the solution architect starts with real enterprise context, not a blank canvas
3. Extend freely — add solution-level detail, model application components, design integrations, iterate with the development team
4. Share with developers via URL — they see the diagram in their browser, no licence needed

From solution back to enterprise

1. The solution architect exports the completed design from Arktik as an Open Exchange Format file
2. The enterprise architect imports the solution model into the governed repository
3. The new elements and relationships are integrated into the enterprise landscape — linked to existing elements, placed in the correct folders, validated against governance rules

This creates a natural flow: enterprise context flows down to inform solution design, and solution designs flow back up to enrich the enterprise baseline. The Open Exchange Format ensures nothing is lost in either direction — elements retain their IDs, relationships remain intact, and views preserve their layout.

The result is a clean separation of concerns: governance where governance belongs (the enterprise repository), freedom where freedom is needed (solution design in Arktik), and a structured handoff in both directions.

The Cost of Exclusion

When architecture tools are restricted by per-seat licensing, organisations pay a hidden cost: architectural knowledge doesn't flow to where it's needed most.

• Development teams build without visibility into the broader landscape, leading to duplication and integration issues
• Solution architects communicate designs through static images rather than navigable models
• New team members can't explore the architecture independently — they depend on whoever has tool access to show them
• Architecture reviews become bottlenecks because only a few people can create or modify models

The real cost isn't the licence fee itself — it's the decisions made without architectural context because the people making them couldn't access the tools.

Key Capabilities

Who Benefits

The Solution Architect

You work with development teams day to day. You need to visualise designs quickly, share them in a standup, iterate during a refinement session. You need the notation to be correct — because your designs will eventually need to align with the enterprise architecture — but you don't need governance slowing you down at the design stage. Arktik gives you a proper ArchiMate tool that's as fast as a whiteboard.

The Growing Company (50–500 employees)

You've outgrown informal architecture but can't justify €800+ per seat per year for enterprise tooling. Arktik is completely free — giving your entire team access to full ArchiMate modelling, from architects and tech leads to developers.

The Consulting Firm

You work with multiple clients, each with different environments and constraints. Arktik is always available through the browser — no per-engagement licence provisioning. Deliver models in a standard format that any client can import into their own platform.

The Enterprise Architecture Team

Your governed repository serves its purpose well. But your solution architects are modelling in PowerPoint because they don't have seats. Arktik lets them start from your exported views — with real enterprise context — and produce structured designs you can import back. You get richer, more complete models without expanding your licence count.

Why ArchiMate Matters at the Solution Level

Some might argue that solution architects don't need ArchiMate — that it's an "enterprise-level" notation. I disagree.

When solution architects use ArchiMate, their designs are:

• Compatible with the enterprise baseline — alignment checks become structural, not conversational
• Unambiguous — the notation has precise semantics for relationships and element types
• Reusable — designs can be promoted to the enterprise repository without re-drawing
• Consistent — across projects and teams, everyone speaks the same modelling language

The problem was never that ArchiMate doesn't work at the solution level. It's that the tools for ArchiMate were priced for the enterprise level only.

Getting Started

Arktik is cloud-hosted. To start:

1. Open Arktik in your browser
2. Click "New Model" or open an existing ArchiMate Open Exchange Format XML file
3. Start modelling with the full ArchiMate palette
4. Share the URL with your team

There is nothing to install, nothing to configure, and no licence to request. If you have a browser, you have access to a full ArchiMate modelling tool.

Conclusion

The per-seat pricing model of enterprise architecture tools has created an artificial divide: a small group of people who can model, and a much larger group who are excluded from the tools but still need to do architecture work.

Arktik exists to close that gap. It gives solution architects the freedom to model properly, to share designs with their teams instantly, and to produce artefacts that integrate with the enterprise platform when ready. It gives smaller organisations access to ArchiMate modelling without the enterprise price tag.

About the Author

Arthur van der Knaap is the creator of Arktik and founder of Knaap. Based in Finland, he has worked across enterprise and solution architecture in the Nordics, spanning organisations from lean technology companies to large enterprises. His experience at the intersection of architecture governance and hands-on delivery shaped the conviction that architecture tooling should be accessible to everyone involved in building systems — not just those with a seat licence.

Connect with Arthur on LinkedIn.