We mostly use ARIS for the documentation of processes, not for the architecture. It helps us find gaps and quickly analyze where the bottlenecks are.
Within our organization, there are roughly 10 people using ARIS. We have a license, but our employees tend to use other software that they are more familiar with.
It's really fast for process design. It's much faster compared to Enterprise Architect. Compared to Blueworks, I would say ARIS has stronger ability to manage enterprise architecture with more details.
Using the well defined architecture/ metamodel, you can create complicated structures, but it's still easily trackable. Also, you can have two kinds of reporting, either for queries or for reporting to reports — some of which are built-in, which makes it more powerful compared to Blueworks.
ARIS is quite a good tool for simplification. There is one necessary feature that's missing and it is a pity that it's not a built-in feature of the software — It's in a different product. You can have a collaboration feature, but it's necessary to have ARIS Connect which is a separate, costly product.
For example, with Blueworks, collaboration is built-in, as a feature of the software. You can take a link or hyperlink of the model and the design, send it to someone who has some decision authority and collaborate. With ARIS, this collaboration feature is not built-in. It's located in different software which is also an AG product, but it comes with an additional cost.
I have been using this solution for over 15 years.
ARIS Architect and Designer is both scalable and stable.
We don't really need technical support. As a product, it's stable. We don't often need technical support.
Personally, I would say the initial setup is quite straightforward.
We spent a few days discussing the load setup of infrastructure systems, which we needed. It's not necessary to spend that long, but as we have a different location for the infrastructure, so we had to prepare it. It's necessary to have an infrastructure discussion.
I believe the installation itself took one day, including the installation of ARIS Server, ARIS Architect, and also ARIS Publisher. That's why it took one day — but it was one easy day. The database upload can take two or three hours.
We were supported by a local vendor who has a strong understanding of the installation itself.
For deployment of the product itself, because we are a big company, we needed one infrastructure expert who built the server, then another person who managed it. For smaller companies, this can be done by one person.
I just had to ask the IT department to prepare a server, and they got everything ready for deployment. Afterward, I called the vendor who then came and deployed the product.
I would definitely recommend ARIS.
On a scale from one to ten, I would give ARIS a rating of eight. If they added a collaboration feature, I would give it a ten.
