OrbusInfinity Reviews

We use it for application inventory, reporting, and application capability mapping. We also do impact analysis and diagramming. 

It's a SaaS deployment. So, we're using its latest version.

We're able to articulate all the entities across our enterprise on one platform. We're able to see nice dashboards that show the relationships among various entities, such as from applications to capabilities to goals to risks and so forth. We've been able to translate that, and on one or two occasions, we were able to advise management and say that we're doing too many projects, or this is the number of applications we have compared to the number of people we have supporting them. We're able to do something like impact analysis, where we can test if we're going to touch an application, these are the other applications that will be impacted and these are the integrations we've done across the enterprise. We can visualize all that essentially. 

We were also able to use Orbus to do an enterprise architecture project for one of our affiliates. We were able to collect their data, map it, and be able to advise them on the next steps in terms of their transformation journey. The way Orbus is structured is that you can have different models, but we just used one model for a specific affiliate to give advice on the transformation journey for that affiliate.

We've been able to do all our modeling with it. Orbus integrates with Visio. So, we're able to do models in such a way that when I do a model and I've identified a particular component, on Orbus, I can tell every other system that depends on that component. This way of doing relationships has been useful for us. 

We're also able to put up the old diagrams on the specific repository and refer to them. We're now able to publish the repositories on these dashboards. So, anyone across the enterprise will be able to view our models. When we make changes to the models, we don't have to send emails with the files anymore. After we make any changes, others can immediately see the changes that we made as long as we've given them access.

I like the integration with the Office tools such as Visio and Excel. The integration with Excel helped us to be able to upload data very easily. Integration with Visio helps us to be able to make changes once and have a centralized diagram. We don't have versions of the diagram. This integration with the Office tools is very useful. Recently, they launched an integration with Microsoft Word, but we've not used it yet. It will help us to do some documentation, and I found that quite interesting as well. 

I like the fact that it's easy to learn. The learning curve is not too steep because it's very much like a copy of the Office tools.

I also like the applications hub. You can launch different kinds of applications, particularly dashboards, such as application capability maps, portfolio applications, and all sorts of things. It's just for you to run through the process of launching that application from the hub or Orbus software that comes, and you have a new dashboard that you can use to see how the enterprise is evolving. 

The refresh cycles for our dashboards could be better. I keep complaining about that. The refresh is supposed to be once a day, but I would love it if it was real-time so that if I make a change to the data in iServer, I should see those changes immediately reflected in the dashboards. They use Power BI, and it seems they've scheduled their refresh to be once a day, which is not that good for us.

We've had some issues with the integration between Visio and iServer because sometimes the add-in that allows you to do that integration takes a lot of memory and then your Visio crashes. However, I've not experienced this issue for some time, so it was probably fixed in the recent version. Also, if I copy a large amount of data and I want to copy from one Visio file to another, I have had a case where it suddenly just closes Visio without saving. So, that integration could be more smooth.

There should be ease of integration with other systems in our environment such as SysAid. I understand that there is an integration to ServiceNow, but we use SysAid. We need to be able to say that when there's an incident that impacts or requires a change in a particular component, ServiceNow or SysAid should be able to communicate to Orbus that this component is about to change. Similarly, when it comes to discovery or when a new architecture change has happened in the enterprise, we should be able to detect the change in the baseline Enterprise Architecture. There should be such advanced automation.

The visibility of our models is limited to those to whom we have assigned licenses. I would've loved it if everyone in the organization could at least see the diagrams. The licensing should be there for those who need to make updates or changes.

This is our second year. The business started in June 2021.

It's quite stable. About 99.9% of the time, it's up. We've had an outage only once since we started. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of stability.

It's so far scalable, but I'm looking at scalability in terms of how many objects you can put up there and whether it gets slower as they're loading. Typically, the number of objects is limited by the license, but so far, we've not had any issues with having too many objects uploaded or anything like that. I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of scalability.

We have roughly 50 users. We have allocated almost 80 licenses, but the regular users are around 50. Out of these 50 users, five or six of us are the real direct users who interact with the system in terms of making changes. They are Enterprise Architects. That's basically it.

We have plans to increase its usage, but it all depends on how we're able to drive adoption here and demonstrate its usefulness in terms of the use cases.

Their support is good. The response time is okay. They usually respond within a day, but it can always be improved.

Positive

We were not using any tool before Orbus.

It was straightforward because we chose the SaaS option. We were guided by the consultant. The main thing was integration with Azure AD and then access to our own platform or our own tenancy on the SaaS platform. I would rate it a seven out of ten in terms of the ease of the setup.

The whole project took less than two months. Most of the time was because of our internal processes. The actual technical work was for a week or two.

In terms of maintenance, it's quite straightforward. There's no real maintenance. All the upgrades are done by the platform. We just manage the data that we put on the platform.

We took the help of a consultant. From our side, we had roughly 10 people.

It was very cost-effective as compared to the other ones we evaluated. We spent about $20,000 per annum for support and license together. There was also an implementation fee at the beginning. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of pricing.

I would recommend it. I would recommend going for the SaaS option. It's quite easy and straightforward. It's cost-effective, and it's fit for purpose once you've put it to use.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

The primary use case is for collecting and housing all information, which has to do with the applications, architecture servers, and the technology, et cetera, and using that to collate course information.

The solution is deployed on cloud. The previous version was on private cloud infrastructure, and now it's the integrated platform as a service.

The most valuable features are mainly the reporting side of things and the dashboard. We mostly use those features. We normally collect the data and import it via spreadsheets. Then the data is manipulated and utilized, but it benefits through the BI interface. SharePoint integration makes it easier for our administrators to upload information into the system for the business intelligence side of things.

We found a few issues with importing data and all the manipulation of data, especially when it came to the BI side of things because it utilized a particular template to be able to get certain reports. The user administrators could not manipulate it to get the right reports. With iServer 365, they have said that those things were resolved but to fully test it because we only migrated it in late December.

I can't tell you all the defects that we have found within iServer 365, but a major issue was that we won't go to fully customize it without the intervention of the team to do any kind of customization or dashboards. That was our major problem with the old system.

If you're coming from the 2019 on-premise version, the report packs are grouped in the same manner as in the old 365. If they review one pack, the on premise pack, and there are five dashboards in a pack, that same pack would now only have four, or three dashboards in some cases. 

The other two that you're missing are now within other dashboard packs that you have to find or you have make switches to find. In that case, I would like them to make it easier to find old dashboards that you would've had configured in the previous system, so at least you can start back from where you last left off, or from a familiar area.

We had five dashboards in one particular application portfolio pack, and when we re-installed the new application portfolio pack, we were missing two, only to find out that those two were now part of a different pack, which we did not have a license for because there is a limited amount of packs available to use. We weren't aware of those types of inconsistencies.

I have been using this solution for two years.

Two months ago, we were using iServer 2019. We recently moved to iServer 365.

The solution seems to be very stable. The older version, which was iServer 2019, had some issues. There was a lot of being locked out of the system. There were some details that we had on the system, and for some reason, everything that we had on the system was deleted. Then we had to get it reinstalled. Within a two day period, we would have ended up losing everything. Those types of things were still problems with the 2019 on-premise version. 

They still have that on premise version, so that problem still exists there. The other issue was that with the old version, we were forced to have higher versions of Visio on our desktops within our organization to utilize all the features. That posed a problem because it was not budgeted for at the time.

The scalability is fine. The plan is to have at least 50 users utilizing it.

It wasn't that complex, but for us, support did most of all the work. That's what made it very easy for us. They did everything from migrations to the whole configuration, based on our needs.

For deployment, we only needed one person. I was just the liaison between the company in terms of getting data from our company and giving it to iServer support to get it onto the system itself. We didn't need a lot of employees from our end for that.

The licensing is on a yearly basis. We currently work with a standard fee.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10. 

I would say to understand what you really want to put into the system, in terms of what features you want because it becomes pricey after implementation when there are different consultation fees. If you would like to add a particular feature later on that wasn't thought of at the time, it definitely becomes a little more expensive, and that's where we had a problem with InVision 2019. 

We were missing one particular feature, and adding that feature meant a 10 hour consultation fee, which was a third of the price of the entire implementation. It was cheaper for us to go with iServer 365, where we would get a free consultation and it had that feature we were missing. 

Really understand what features you want at the start so that you can better utilize your consultation time.