Avolution ABACUS vs erwin Data Modeler comparison

Avolution and Quest Software are both solutions in the Enterprise Architecture Management category. Avolution is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0, while Quest Software is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.3. Avolution holds a 3.6% mindshare in AM, compared to Quest Software’s 10.0% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Avolution users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Quest Software users who would recommend it.

Avolution ABACUS

Read 15 Avolution ABACUS reviews

2,169 Views
1,822 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

erwin Data Modeler

Read 39 erwin Data Modeler reviews

5,179 Views
3,574 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Avolution ABACUS

erwin Data Modeler

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 19, 2025

Avolution ABACUS and erwin Data Modeler compete in the field of enterprise data modeling and architectural management. Avolution ABACUS takes the upper hand in enterprise architecture tools, while erwin excels in database-specific modeling.

Features: Avolution ABACUS provides robust simulation with flexible visualization, allowing for comprehensive enterprise architecture management. It includes built-in catalogs and diagram support to dynamically customize models based on business needs. Abacus also features an Analytical and Simulation Engine for enterprise-wide impact assessments. Erwin Data Modeler's strength lies in its advanced database modeling and multi-platform support, enabling automated code generation and customized data definitions to simplify data model transformations. Its capabilities in traceability and consistency ensure accurate engineering of data sources.

Room for Improvement:Avolution ABACUS could enhance its interoperability with other BI tools and improve predictive analytics capabilities. Erwin Data Modeler might benefit from broader compatibility with cloud platforms and improving reverse engineering speed for large datasets. Ensuring more user-friendly and organizational standardization features could enhance their appeal to broader enterprise use cases.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Avolution ABACUS offers straightforward integration with existing IT environments, supported by responsive customer service. This flexibility appeals to larger enterprises. Erwin's deployment is more specialized towards database-focused teams, with comprehensive support resources to assist niche technical needs.

Pricing and ROI: Avolution ABACUS presents a scalable pricing model that suits enterprise-wide deployments, yielding high ROI for extensive implementations. Erwin Data Modeler, though more costly initially, offers substantial returns in data-centric projects where its specialized features are crucial.

To learn more, read our detailed Avolution ABACUS vs. erwin Data Modeler Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Avolution ABACUS vs. erwin Data Modeler

July 2025

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Helped 865,295 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Avolution ABACUS

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

erwin Data Modeler

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Design (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of Avolution ABACUS is 3.6%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Data Modeler is 10.0%, down from 10.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Architecture Management

Featured Reviews

JoseCamacho

Freelancer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Supports evaluating architecture through corporate objectives

I conducted an evaluation of enterprise architecture at the European Court in Luxembourg, reviewing and analyzing existing implementations to identify potential improvements and providing recommendations I conduct evaluations to identify potential improvements and make recommendations, forming a…

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JorgeSanz

Data Governance Senior Advisor at Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

Streamline data modeling and automate network changes for increased efficiency

The initial setup depends on the tool if you are using the data model environment. Stopping the server could be complex and require strong expertise. If you have everything set up and configured, Erwin is straightforward. You can deploy it in a few hours. In our case, it took a couple of months to address internal conditions, assign machines, and set up everything for the services. I rate the initial setup a six out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"You can design using a diagram tool installed on your desktop, a key difference from other vendors."

"Avolution ABACUS allows for flexible enterprise architecture analysis."

"The most valuable feature is that it has a customizable meta-model, which is key."

"The technical support is very good. They are responsive and the answers they provide are detailed."

"There are a lot of different features, but the business/decision-maker feature, visibility, and dashboards are most valuable."

"The ease of modeling and the ease of showing interconnectivity and relationships is the most valuable. It is fairly simple and out of the box. It is customizable in many ways. It is a pretty good tool."

"Scalable and stable tool for roadmapping and modeling, with a good dashboard, end-to-end impact analysis, and portfolio management."

"It's more than just an enterprise architecture tool as it has a lot of nice features, e.g. messaging, simulation, etc."

More Avolution ABACUS pros

"The product lets us import different types of models from various databases."

"We had some data integration projects, where we needed to integrate it for about 100 databases. Doing that manually is crazy; we can't do that. With erwin, it was much easier to identify which tables and columns could be used for the integration. That means a lot in terms of time and effort as well as my image to the customer, because they can see that we are providing value in a very short time."

"They have a lot of features and the most up-to-date technology integration, which I haven't seen in other products."

"When you're getting down to the database level, where you're building a design and you're creating DDL out of it, or you're going in the other direction where you're reaching into system catalogs and bringing things back, that starts to really require specialization. Visio isn't going to reverse-engineer that for you. Those features in erwin are valuable."

"We use the macros with naming standards patterns, domains, datatypes, and some common attributes. As far as other automations, a feature of the Bulk Editor is mass updates. When it sees something is nonstandard or inaccurate, it will export the better data out. Then, I can easily see which entities and attributes are not inline or standard. I can easily make changes to what was uploaded to the Bulk Editor. When taking on a new project, it can save you about a half a day on a big project across an entire team."

"We find that its ability to generate database code from a model for a wide array of data sources cuts development time. The ability to create one model in your design phase and then have it generate DDL code for Oracle or Teradata, or whichever environment you need is really nice. It's not only nice but it also saves man-hours of time. You would have to take your design and just type in manually. It has to take days off out of the work."

"Quest can create conceptual and physical data models to facilitate effective communication between business and IT. It can also integrate expertise from various engineering and database systems within your organization to enhance data management and administration."

"It is a scalable solution...The technical support team is fine."

More erwin Data Modeler pros

Cons

"It is vastly scalable but you can't run it on a Mac or Linux so it has limitations."

"While Avolution ABACUS is flexible, it can be complex to work with as it requires knowledge of specific configurations to customize the product."

"Avolution ABACUS has the drawback of needing data filtering at the development level, unlike some tools that offer filtering at deployment. Two areas where Avolution ABACUS could be improved are regional support and flexibility in model selection. Sometimes, it's challenging to access support or updates in certain regions, which can slow down progress. Additionally, it would be beneficial if the tool allowed more flexibility in selecting multiple models within a single unit."

"While this is one of the most powerful tools on the market it does not integrate well with Microsoft Office or others."

"If they want to expand in the European market then they are going to have to improve their technical support."

"It doesn't have the simulation capability, which would be helpful in doing some business process analysis and improvements."

"The most valuable features are the catalog and the diagram."

"They should take more initiative to implement things that competing products have already come out with."

More Avolution ABACUS cons

"The erwin Data Modeler is quite complex to use."

"I would like to see the ability to support more NoSQL platforms more quickly. In addition, enhancing the graphics to render more quickly would be beneficial for any user."

"In terms of new features, it would be great to have a cloud base. We should be able to put it on the cloud for better collaboration and data models sharing."

"Some Source official systems give us DDLs to work with and they have contents not required to be part of the DDL before we reverse engineer in the erwin DM. Therefore, we manually make changes to those scripts and edit them, then reverse-engineer within the tool. So, it does take some time to edit these DDL scripts generated by the source operational systems. What I would suggest: It would be helpful if there were a place within the erwin tool to import the file and automatically eliminate all the unnecessary lines of code, and just have the clean code built-in to generate the table/data model."

"Complete Compare is set up only to compare properties that are of interest to us, but some of the differences cannot be brought over from one version of the model to another. This is despite the fact that we are clicking to bring objects from one place to another. Therefore, it's hard to tell at times if Complete Compare is working as intended without having to manually go into the details and check everything. If it could be redesigned to a degree where it is easier to use when we bring things over from one site to another and be sure that it's been done correctly, that would be nice to have. We would probably use the tool more often if the Complete Compare were easier to use."

"I still use Visio for conceptual modeling, and that's mainly because it is easier to change things, and you can relax some of the rules. DM's eventual target is a database, which means you actually have to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts, but in a conceptual model, you don't often know what you're working with. So, that's probably a constraint with erwin. They have made it a lot easier, and they've done a lot, but there is probably still room for improvement in terms of the ease of presentation back to the business. I'm comparing it with something like Visio where you can change colors on a box, change the text color and that sort of stuff, and change the lines. Such things are a whole lot easier in Visio, but once you get a theme organized in erwin, you can apply that theme to all of the objects. So, it becomes easier, but you do have to set up that theme."

"erwin generally fails to successfully reverse engineer our Oracle Databases into erwin data models. The way that they are engineered on our side, the syntax is correct from an Oracle perspective, but it seems to be very difficult for erwin to interpret. What I end up doing is using Oracle Data Modeler to reverse engineer into the Oracle data model, then forward engineer the DDL into an Oracle syntax, and importing that DDL into erwin in order to successfully bring in most of the information from our physical data models. That is a bit of a challenge."

"The erwin ETL functionality has room for improvement when it comes to mapping databases with a classic entity-relationship model to a data warehouse model."

More erwin Data Modeler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is not an issue."

"To get a fairly extensive license for Enterprise Architects from Spark is approximately US $400.00, maybe less, but with Avolution Abacus it was approximately US $2000.00 per year, and that includes maintenance with the Abacus tool."

"I'm paying on a yearly basis. I don't know whether it's a highly expensive tool or not. I'm getting a single version of it, and I don't have the enterprise part on it because I don't need the server component, and I don't need a web browser component. My estimate would be that it's a very reasonably priced tool given that you don't need to have licenses with everyone in order to get the information and the decision support capabilities out of the tool. You use the enterprise edition on top of the studio, which is the heart of the tool. I am not aware of any additional costs."

"It is competitive. It is not chump change. I am just using the studio version. I am not using the full enterprise version, which would probably cost me three times more for single-use, but it gives a lot more capability and analysis. It is server-based as well, and it is reasonably priced compared to a lot of the other tools. There are other tools that have other sorts of capabilities, but in order to use them, you'd really have to have like 50 users for the price to become justifiable."

"There is a subscription for this solution. We are on an annual subscription because you sometimes receive special offers the longer you subscribe."

"It is expensive."

"My company makes annual payments toward the licensing costs of the solution. Considering the product's capabilities, its prices are very reasonable."

"The pricing is quite good compared to the competition and it is part of the reason we chose the product."

More Avolution ABACUS pricing and cost advice

"erwin is expensive compared to other solutions. We are paying almost $6,000 per seat a month."

"There is either a one-year or three-year license. It is not a pay-as-you-go license like a SaaS solution. It’s more of a traditional licensing. They are a little bit on the pricier side."

"It is not a very expensive solution. Only the licensing and maintenance fee needs to be paid."

"Price-wise, erwin Data Modeler is okay. You can purchase a single license and it is not very expensive."

"The solution is expensive."

"erwin Data Modeler by Quest is an expensive solution."

"This company had bought the license for three years, and it's not an individual license. While you can buy a license for each individual, that would be very expensive. There is something called concurrent licenses where you can purchase licenses in bulk and 15 to 20 people can access the license and model. Concurrent licenses are scalable to the number of users and are proportional to the cost."

"There are two license options and the pricing is reasonable."

More erwin Data Modeler pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

16%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Avolution ABACUS?

The tool's implementation is straightforward as everything is readily available. For instance, setting up a portal is seamless, allowing easy publishing and access to data. However, integrating wit...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Avolution ABACUS?

It's pricey compared to Essential, Deltek, or Essential Cloud. However, its diagramming capabilities and metamodel design make it worth it. But it's not for large user bases. It has modules for app...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Avolution ABACUS?

While Avolution ABACUS is flexible, it can be complex to work with as it requires knowledge of specific configurations to customize the product. It would be beneficial to have seminars or other met...

See all answers

What do you like most about erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

Forward engineering, DDL generation, reverse engineering, and reporting are the most valuable features of the solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

The product is expensive. I rate the product’s pricing a nine out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

As a documenting tool, it's solid, though its reporting could be more robust. The reporting mechanisms could be more intuitive regarding report creation. It can generate reports in CSV files, displ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 19% of the time

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Compared 16% of the time

MEGA HOPEX vs Avolution ABACUS

Compared 14% of the time

BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs Avolution ABACUS

Compared 7% of the time

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SAP PowerDesigner vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 36% of the time

IDERA ER/Studio vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 18% of the time

Lucidchart vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 12% of the time

Visio vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Avolution ABACUS

July 2025

Download Avolution ABACUS product report

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Modeler

August 2025

Download erwin Data Modeler product report

Also Known As

No data available

erwin DM

Overview

ABACUS is the enterprise architecture tool designed to have the quickest time-to-value. You can use it to build and maintain rich visual models from existing company data. ABACUS comes with standard industry frameworks as well as advanced analytic tools and best-in-class roadmapping and reporting functionality.

With Avolution ABACUS You Can:

Strategize and analyze your organizational architecture with ease using data-driven diagrams
Enjoy connected data, models, and metrics across your whole enterprise
Work directly and securely in your browser, which is ideal for global teams and remote working

Avolution ABACUS Features:

Modeling and roadmapping: ABACUS offers a fully provisioned modeling environment for enterprise and IT architecture, strategic planning, and digital business management.
Digital collaboration: Avolution ABACUS includes a feature that allows you to set up dashboards so you can tell data stories using business-friendly visualizations.
Portfolio management: Anyone can update their own data, which, in turn, reduces the workload of the enterprise architecture team.
Data-driven architecture: ABACUS’s data-driven architecture gives you the opportunity to design and automate key calculations using out-of-the-box or simple no-code algorithms.
Collaborative data management: Using this feature, you can save time with single sign-on (SSO) and AD Integrations; You can embed directly in MS Teams, Confluence, or other workplace social software.
Dynamic data visualizations: ABACUS’s graph view allows you to navigate through systems in a dynamic environment, as opposed to static diagram views.

Avolution ABACUS Benefits:

Time efficient: Models and roadmaps automatically stay up-to-date, saving your organization a lot of time so you can focus on other priorities instead.
Centralized location: With Avolution ABACUS, you can connect all data in one place, keeping everything both consistent and accurate.
Full flexibility: ABACUS gives you full flexibility to adapt and configure your own metamodels with ease.
Complete visibility: Your whole enterprise can have visibility of the architecture through the use of digital collaboration and visually clear dashboards.
Machine learning: With Avolution ABACUS, you can employ machine learning to speed data management and analysis.
Spot dependencies: ABACUS helps your organization spot dependencies and impacts that might trip up your projects.
Fully customizable: Avolution ABACUS is fully customizable; Select, configure, or adapt your repository and metamodel. You can also automate metrics and analytics specific to your business.

Reviews from Real Users:

Andre W., Enterprise Architect at Enterprise Architecture Perspectives, says, "The most valuable feature is that it has a customizable meta-model, which is key.”

The Lead Enterprise Domain Architects at a financial services firm feels that "The product is easy to use and well-structured for the integrations we need it to make.”

"There are plenty of features available, such as the ability to test applications for issues and a user-friendly dashboard,” says Suresh T., Enterprise Digital Solution Architect at a tech services company.

Avolution

Erwin Data Modeler provides an effective approach to visualizing and managing data models. It assists in creating, reversing, and synchronizing data models with ease, supporting logical and physical transitions while enhancing understanding across teams.

Erwin Data Modeler is a comprehensive tool designed for professional database management. It offers capabilities to organize and enforce standards, automating script generation with robust reverse engineering and DDL output. Users can manage complex data environments, capitalize on integration with data intelligence, and maintain large-scale databases smoothly. Despite its strengths, improvements in multi-language support, database integration, and reporting features are needed. Users benefit from extensive support for conceptual, logical, and physical database modeling, enhancing architectural design and data governance for platforms like SQL Server, Oracle, and Teradata.

What are the key features of Erwin Data Modeler?

Visual Representation: Facilitates clear visualization of data models, aiding comprehension.
Versioning and Editing: Enhance usability with versioning and bulk editing capabilities.
Reverse Engineering: Offers powerful tools for reverse engineering and DDL generation.
Integration: Aligns with data intelligence to streamline database management.
Naming Standards: Enforces consistency with automated script creation.

What benefits should users consider in Erwin Data Modeler reviews?

Collaboration: Promotes team understanding and collaboration through visual tools.
Automation: Reduces manual effort through automated processes and integration.
Scalability: Handles large database management efficiently, crucial for enterprise settings.
Data Governance: Facilitates effective data governance with structured modeling.

Erwin Data Modeler finds application in industries focused on robust data management, implementing it for enterprise data warehouses, business domain models, and operational systems. It supports architectural design and governance, aligning with business applications demanding precise data representation and visualization.

Quest Software

Sample Customers

Barclays

Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples

Buyer's Guide

Avolution ABACUS vs. erwin Data Modeler

July 2025

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