Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect Reviews

My job is about helping the organization to create a functional solution. I build models for the organization at the business layer, application layer, etc. It also involves integration with other tools, such as erwin, for data modeling.

Its traversability is most valuable. I can use ArchiMate, and I can create a UML model. ArchiMate is for logical enterprise architecture, UML is for software engineering, and BPMN is for business processes. I can build it to have multiple models, and they are also traversable, which is not something that every tool allows. If there is a huge organization, you can segment it and have separate models for business technology or internal resource management system. You don't need to keep them in one model, and you can decide to segregate them.

Its model-centric approach makes it very easy to create documentation based on a template. Every company says that maintaining documentation is a very tedious task, and it usually requires subject matter experts. That's why companies rarely maintain documentation, but when you maintain the model, and you have the right processes and the right roles assigned, it can be naturally maintained. You can just simply produce a document by selecting whatever you need and in a format that you need. It is a very powerful feature.

From a practical point of view, we need speed and reliability for creating a model and doing some really meaningful tasks such as application landscape, refactoring, etc. These are two primary criteria. Sometimes, when you import something, it creates the object duplicates, or it allows you to do something that you're not supposed to do. For example, validation is missing. This could be frustrating because when you work at a high speed, you need to come back and start fixing things that the tool allowed you to go with, which is not quite good. So, there should probably be some internal mechanisms to advise you about what you're doing and what is probably not the best idea.

For example, you can do many things with ArchiMate, which is modeling language, but people can interpret many things incorrectly. They start modeling and then realize that it is not a good idea. So, it is not the tool itself. It is probably a combination of the modeling language and the tool that validates it. It would be very good if validation mechanics are embedded in the tool to, at least, advise people that a particular thing is allowed to be done in this way, but doing it would also mean something else that you may not want. The languages themselves are not perfect. In a large company, you have many people doing the modeling. If they interpret things differently and the tool allows them to do that, then you would have to do some rework.

I have been in and out. I have probably been using this solution for seven or eight years.

When I use it, it is stable. I do not have any problems. I really love the tool, and I have friends who work with this. They simply admire it. So, it is very popular in this area.

I didn't use their tech support much.

I tried to build a design with another solution two or three years ago, but there was something wrong and it was very slow. It was called Business Design. So, basically, I just said that I cannot use it for the scale of the task that I have. I simply cannot use that tool. They could maybe tune it up. I'm not blaming the tool itself, but my experience with it was really negative. I expect that the Sparx program will be faster.

I am asking my IT to install version 15 on my laptop. I have submitted a request, and I want to have it set up and then try it. I will play with this a little bit and figure it out.

I use my own license. So, I just bought the professional version, which costs $800 or something like that. 

In the company where I am working, we have floating licenses. They are probably more expensive. Its licensing is affordable, but we are talking about a large organization, and there could be modelers or viewers of the models. We don't know how much that would cost us.

Currently, I am using a different tool, which is open-source, because the company didn't want to pay. It looks like they have changed their mind, and I have now started looking into the tool. I will also be looking at other cloud-based tools, including Sparx. We haven't yet made a decision. We will compare all the options, and Sparx has very good chances. We are quite positive about it, but there is also competition.

My task right now is to create a model for the entire organization with thousands of NMLs and tens of thousands of relationships. It is very big, so the speed of the process in it is very important. My superiors are thinking about a cloud version because they don't really want to maintain it. They're talking about something like DevOps so that in the development, they have the continuous promotion of the code, automated testing, etc. We are not building the executable code. If you look into a modeling language, it is a language. It is not a programming language, but it comes under the same category as the programming language. For many people, it is much easier to understand than Enterprise Architect. They try to stay away because of the complexity.

I would rate Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect an eight out of 10. My experience is a little bit outdated, but I was very pleased with it.

My company is a leading software team. I tend to get brought in early stages for understanding and identifying problems. I look through what the customers are actually doing and I tend to move on into the system's analysis and architecture to see whether there are opportunities for interventions and gaps.

The features I find most valuable is the ability to create a document and then put it into a OneCare artifact. This feature allows me to share the visual I bring about with other communities that are not system analysts because not everyone can afford to have a copy of Enterprise Architect. 

Additionally, the solution operates well as a whole and has very comprehensive capabilities.

The areas of improvement should be focused on utility service such as producing better graphics, perhaps having a wider image library set and producing better models for working directly with customers. The solution does not provide things like shadow effect and 3D computer graphics instead of 2D.

More polishing on the presentation should be included in the next release. 

I have been using this on a regular basis for the last four years. For the additional six years, I have used the solution in intervals as I needed.

Initially, I found the stability of this solution reliable until there was an unexpected access crash leaving an LDB that prevented me from accessing my database, even after deleting the LDB file.  I had to use the previous version to solve the problem which I had to work on for two days.

I find the solution very configurable. I could go in and change the format for export. I brought products into the ArchiMate from EA and the other way around. They seemed to work because they store them as common components.

The support team have been very good at responding and coming back quickly with a query.

I previously used to work on Salamander but it did not add on what I already know. I was also recently teaching Visual Paradigm and ArchiMate.

The initial setup was straightforward to run as a single user on a single machine. There might have been an issue around installing access to the image library on the cloud environment. I think it was just a patch version that I needed to get to fix the issue.

The licence has a costly upfront fee which gets you access. You have to pay an annual maintenance fee, which is less.

I think the pricing is justified because I use it very often. 

I would certainly recommend this solution if you are a serious business or a system architect, who are modelling complex systems. You will already be aware of the product and you will know what it could do for you.

I rate Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect an eight out of ten. 

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is used by our architects to put out artifacts, collaborate, work together, and share those artifacts. The product is used to maintain the versions of architectural diagrams, use case diagrams, etc.

I'd like Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect to be more stable, and have a more improved performance. It should also have a sharing feature and allow us to easily share artifacts with our business partners, rather than requiring them to install the product on their site first. If people who don't have licenses could also view what we're sharing, that would be great.

I've used Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect for the past 10 years.

This product should be more stable.

The cloud version of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is scalable, without a doubt.

I'm satisfied with the technical support for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect.

The initial setup for this product was slightly complicated. It was complicated for the business users, the non-IT teams, and the non-technical teams, but I was able to do the setup myself.

We pay for the license of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, and it is a yearly subscription.

I evaluated Visio. I use it in parallel with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect.

I used Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect on-premises at the start, then later on for other clients, I used it on cloud. I used the latest version on cloud, but for the on-premises deployment, I used an earlier version, but I don't remember the version number.

There is a learning curve with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, e.g. to be comfortable and to start using it full-fledged. It took me a month of practice.

On average, we have 50 users of this product, and 20 technical people in charge of its deployment.

I can recommend Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect to other people who may want to start implementing it.

My rating for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is eight out of ten.

We use Sparx to create enterprise-level architecture in high-level environments and ticketing IT landscapes.

The solution saved a lot of time, about 30%.

I like that this tool contains all of my needs. I have AWS, GCP, and Azure icons. The tool assures collaboration, where my diagrams and graphics are automatically shared amongst the team. I also like the maturity of this tool, where I can present different layers depending on the audience. For example, is this a board or at the IT director level? or is it a developer? I can organize my graphics accordingly.

Another thing I like about the tool is the notation. Features like UML are available, so the tool checks things for me.

The dashboard and connectivity could be improved.

I've used Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect for more than eight years.

I rate the solution's scalability an eight out of ten, and we have 25 users using it.

I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten.

I recommend Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect and rate it a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for modeling. We've tried to map a set of fields and we have and combined it with the processes of the company.

We wanted something that included all of the shapes represented in the software architecture solutions of our company. We created near 2,000 products that we have in the company. We used this product, as well as HOPEX, which we also bought, to represent the software architecture of our solutions and the mapping within the processes of the company.

If you compare the price of MEGA HOPEX with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, Sparx is cheaper.

It's a very practical solution. You don't need to do an advanced course to start using this tool.

It offers great intricacy. You can really do many kinds of models. You don't have to design certain designs in another tool. It even allows enterprise architecture to be modeled within it. 

The solution is very user-friendly. When you draw a diagram to model the architecture, it's very flexible. If you have a double standard, you can use the tool. You can use UML Ultimate if you like. If you have a different set of standards for certain models, you can put those in. 

The documentation and the articles they have on offer are pretty decent.

Sparx can be a bit slow. If you are trying to design software architecture, sometimes we run into issues and need to refresh. HOPEX also occasionally needs to be refreshed as well, actually.

The product has a unified view or a unified database with some limited functionality in the models. In the same database, it can create some problems. I don't know if the problem is that maybe there is a communication issue or we just have too many models in the company. When we're starting the scaling it started to become less capable. We've had trouble with access on the corporate usage level.

We started using this solution around 2018 or 2019. It's been a few years at this point.

I'm not sure how well this product can scale. We have a lot of models and it seems we have reached our limit. 

The solution does seem to offer helpful documentation. 

We are using both Sparx Systems and MEGA HOPEX. Our organization bought both solutions. 

Sparx is less expensive than, for example, HOPEX. 

We have a server license for the product.

We work with both Sparx and HOPEX, and therefore we can easily compare them. Sparx, for example, is less expensive. However, it can run slow sometimes and needs to be refreshed. HOPEX sometimes has the same issue in terms of needing an occasional refresh.

We find Sparx to be more useable as well. It's less technical.

We are customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We are very happy with the product overall. 

Architecture Design (component, deployment), Reference Architecture (enterprise, technology) and Solution Management (external artifacts) accessible globally to all of IT via AWS cloud.

Improved cross-functional team collaboration. Dynamic visual activity models improved communication and understanding with the business. Shared repository enabled reuse of model elements by users. Established a well-defined structure to manage whole solutions. Ability to ingest external document artifacts became a viable alternative to SharePoint. UML based modeling enable model-first approach in lieu of document-first approach to solutioning (alternative to Microsoft Office - Word, Excel, Visio, Powerpoint) 

Version 14 menu organization is much better. Ability to ingest external artifacts with added metadata coupled with UML based modeling is moving the organization to a more digital way of working while preserving legacy artifacts.

A better deployment model for the enterprise without relying on HKEY_CURRENT_USER in the registry.

Very stable. Rarely a crash.

In general, performance and scalability is solid. There are times when communication to the shared repository in AWS would be inconsistent, but I think that was due to the corporate network connection

Customer service / technical support is via email only so is constrained to 24 hour turnaround. Otherwise good responses. 

The Solution Architect team used a combination of Visio (UML), Word (Document Templates), Excel (Requirements) and SharePoint (Repository). Sparx replaced all of this while retaining all of the prior tool features and enabled cross-functional team collaboration for solutioning.

There was a learning curve to deployment constrained by needing to install as the user until we figured out how to deploy using MSI scripts, elevated privileges and a standard REGEDIT file containing a Sparx configuration.

Implementation using in-house team.

We gained 10 - 20 percent improvement to productivity (measured by time to complete solution) and improved quality (measured by reviews)

Setup a shared RDBMS repository (SQL, Oracle, etc.), acquire shared license keys and deploy using MSI scripts.

Considered Visio Professional (has a repository), ArchiMate (too high-level), Rational (too costly)

Establish best practices for solutioning including standardized stereotypes. Drive adoption using a hybrid approach of modeling and ingesting external documents since not everyone will learn to model equally using UML.

I use it for enterprise architecture.

It helps in centralizing data or putting our data in one place.

Artifact templates are most valuable.

It can be improved in the area of shared documentation. The idea is that the architecture tool can call back to an enterprise asset, pull that information, and link that as a sub-artifact.

Shared environments are a little bit tricky. Looking at it from an enterprise perspective, there should be a much better shared environment. I've got multiple people in different business units. Once I model an object, others should be able to reuse that same object multiple times. Currently, it's a lengthy process to set that up from scratch.

I last used it six weeks ago. Before that, I used it for about a year.

It is stable.

It is scalable. We have a really small team. I've got three licenses that we're using, and it's all on the desktops.

I haven't yet interacted with them.

We used to use MagicDraw, and the switch was due to cost. MagicDraw was about $32,000.

Its initial setup was straightforward. In terms of the implementation strategy, our organization doesn't have a lot of architects. This is the beginning of doing this the proper way. There is not really a plan in place. We have just put the software in place, and I have started to collect information and put it into the tool.

I've installed it on a local machine. We could also install it on the server. It has fairly low complexity. It comes with the binary. You just install it.

We implemented it ourselves. We had only one person for this.

We have not yet seen an ROI. It's too early.

It's affordable. The only additional cost that we haven't yet figured out is the floating license. If you buy a floating license, you have to have a license management server, which comes at an additional cost that's not discussed. So, we haven't yet used the floating license. That’s because I haven't had a chance to figure that out.

I had a long list. I had about 15 different enterprise-grade architecture tools. I got a bunch of them off the PeerSpot site.

When using this product in a shared environment, in terms of multiple different aspects of the business, it's not really tied together well at the top or out of the box. It takes some configuration. So, you need to understand how to use shared resources to build architecture so that if you are doing architecture on one object inside the enterprise, somebody else should be able to recreate it independently. What you do should be available to those who need to model it. 

I would rate it a seven out of ten.

Enterprise architecture: Capabilities and business services modeling, business processes mapping and analysis, project prioritization and planning (using ArchiMate and BPMN notations); 

Information architecture: Business information model (Information Entities modeling and Security Classification of entities (Availability, Integrity, Confidentiality)  (using UML notation and specific TAG values);

Solution architecture: Conceptual components architecture (using ArchiMate or UML notation);

Integration of all models in a central collaborative with multi-users, multi-domains, and a multileveled architecture repository structured and organized following the TOGAF 9.x Content model.

Supporting all of the important architecture modeling notations and all types and levels of architecture modeling in a secure, collaborative, and well-integrated model repository is really unifying and beneficial.

Having the possibility of integrating and sharing all architecture models inside a centralized repository for all architecture stakeholders provides immense and cohesive insight into all architecture domains and dimension interrelationships. 

The capability to analyze interdependencies between architectural elements makes for a very reliable comprehension of all architectural interactions, as opposed to trying to figure it out from a pile of Visio and PowerPoints (or any other diagramming tool) independent documents.

The product offers very good support for all mainstream modeling notations and architectural frameworks. It has a very complete and coherent environment for business, architecture, and solution modeling. If what you need is not directly available, you can extend the modelings capabilities to suit your specials needs (TAG values, metamodel extensions (MDG), scripting, API interfaces, ...).

It has a very stable and performant environment. This a necessary capability for supporting a large number and varied kinds of modelers (Business architects & Business analysts, Enterprise architects, Information architects, Domain & Solution Architects, Security Architects, ...), all working at the same time on shared and live models. 

The constant evolution of usability and integration capabilities: Nothing is perfect, but constant polishing and enhancement are reassuring. 

Even if there are web-based tools in the Enterprise Architecture tool ecosystem (like Prolaborate), the main modeling application is still a fat client application. For some organizations, it is still a concern and a significant disqualification criterion for adoption.

The capability to model and analyze while maintaining coherent traceability within different variants (variations or versions) of a future architecture has been greatly enhanced in the recent versions of Enterprise Architect. It requires a very mature, systemic, and methodic approach that is not easy to grasp for junior modelers. 

I have been using Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect for eight years.

In eight years of enterprise-wide modeling with multiple architects and business analysts working day-in-day-out with the environment, we have never had a single major problem and we never lost integrity.

The tool is very robust but assuring complete integrity over time requires competent quality control.

Enterprise Architect is a very flexible and scalable tool. It can be set-up different ways to accommodate capacity, volume, and a number of simultaneous modeling users. 

Almost never have to go through customer service/technical support but, the few times I needed it, they were very responsive and supportive. 

In different contexts and organizations, I have tried and used different modeling tools. That said, when I have the choice of tool to use for architecture modeling I always select Enterprise Architect for its usability (even though it is a complex tool), completeness, and extensibility.

It is usually very simple and straightforward. The real work is setting the standard for collaborative work between teams and projects.

For Enterprise Architect, it is usually very simple and I do it myself easily.

For efficient integration with other tools, I usually suggest going through a vendor team.

It was not measured recently, but being able to analyze traceability and architectural dependencies doing impact analysis has tremendous value. 

Avoiding multiple duplicated elements and being coherent and avoiding confusion about naming or modeling notations from different models or symbols from different modeling tool is very reassuring.

Define your immediate needs and objectives, start small and focused.

Identify some motivated champions inside your organization and find a coach to help them get to know the tools. 

Initially, get comfortable and efficient with the vanilla setup of the tool. Do not try to personalize or extend the tool unless you are confident that it will bring more benefits than confusion. 

Define templates and model examples to set the organizational standards for modeling. Evaluate your progress, adhesion to standards, and quality of models regularly. 

Identify other domains of modeling opportunities that could bring benefits to your organization. With experts and senior architects define a mid/long term vision and costs benefits for integrating all aspects of modeling that are important to you over time.

Annually, revised your mid/long term vision.

In my career, I was involved in many modeling tool selection exercises in many organizations and had the chance to compare most of the available tools on the market (Rational Rose, RSM, RSA, IBM RDA, CaseWise, Mega, Aris, ...). To date, I haven't the opportunity to try and evaluate BiZZdesign.

Hang around in the user's community to gain a perspective of what others do and don't do.