Avolution ABACUS vs erwin Data Modeler by Quest comparison

Avolution and erwin by Quest are both solutions in the Enterprise Architecture Management category. Avolution is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0, while erwin by Quest is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2. Avolution holds a 3.9% mindshare in AM, compared to erwin by Quest’s 11.1% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Avolution users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of erwin by Quest users who would recommend it.

Avolution ABACUS

Read 15 Avolution ABACUS reviews

2,133 Views
1,057 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

erwin Data Modeler by Quest

Read 39 erwin Data Modeler by Quest reviews

4,548 Views
2,477 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Avolution ABACUS

erwin Data Modeler by Quest

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Avolution ABACUS and erwin Data Modeler by Quest compete in the modeling and architecture domain. While Avolution ABACUS is noted for its flexible enterprise architecture capabilities, erwin Data Modeler stands out due to its robust data modeling features, earning an edge in data management.

Features: Avolution ABACUS offers flexibility with its Analytical and Simulation Engine, diverse frameworks, and extensive customization capabilities. The ability to customize the meta-model and catalogs adds to its versatility. erwin Data Modeler provides comprehensive visual data models, efficient reverse engineering, and intuitive migration of foreign keys, facilitating accurate and dynamic data synchronization.

Room for Improvement: Avolution ABACUS could enhance its integration with BI tools and improve its user-friendly interface for complex modeling tasks. Advanced customization may require additional simplification for broader accessibility. erwin Data Modeler may benefit from improved compatibility with cloud databases, better performance with large-scale models, and enhanced integration with other enterprise tools for more seamless workflows.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Avolution ABACUS deployment is straightforward, supported by extensive documentation, making implementation smoother. erwin Data Modeler's deployment is flexible but may require specialized support for custom setups, which is beneficial for organizations with specific data infrastructure needs.

Pricing and ROI: Avolution ABACUS offers competitive pricing with cost-effective ROI for comprehensive architecture management. erwin Data Modeler, despite higher initial costs, ensures substantial ROI with its precise data accuracy and compliance focus, making it suitable for data-centric enterprises.

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

Buyer's Guide

Avolution ABACUS vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest

January 2025

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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 by Quest

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Design (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of Avolution ABACUS is 3.9%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Data Modeler by Quest is 11.1%, up from 10.0% 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

"If you face new challenges or issues then you can dynamically customize according to the business needs."

"It is a very stable solution...The initial setup of Avolution ABACUS is very easy."

"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."

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

"There are plenty of features available such as the ability to test applications for issues and a user-friendly dashboard."

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

"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 with other tools like BI, Power BI, or Grafana requires setting up pipelines between them."

"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 fitting model is very intuitive."

"One of the best aspects of the tool is its reverse engineering capability."

"It provides flexibility with the code. You can change the code as you want. Basically, you can change SQL based on what's best for your project."

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

"I have worked with erwin Data Modeler for quite some time and familiarity is its most valuable feature."

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

"The product allows us to reuse entities and attributes."

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

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest pros

Cons

"In the future, there could be improvements in integration and enhancements."

"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."

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

"The reporting could be easier to configure."

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

"The tool doesn't have any intelligence built in. We have to design the dashboards ourselves, which is a challenge because we have to depend on the vendor for customizations."

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

"I use reference models, which are taxonomies, in my EA work. It is a reference model/taxonomy of things with capabilities, sub capabilities, and sub-sub capabilities, so you're working it down. I haven't yet found a simple way to implement that in Abacus. It could be that it is there, but I don't know how to do it."

More Avolution ABACUS cons

"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."

"It does not have a cloud application."

"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."

"The Bulk Editor needs improvement. If you had something that was a local model to your local machine, you could connect to the API, then it would write directly into the repository. However, when you have something that is on the centralized server, that functionality did not work. Then, you had to export out to a CSV and upload up to the repository. It would have been nice to be able to do the direct API without having that whole download and upload thing. Maybe I didn't figure it out, but I'm pretty sure that didn't work when it was a model that sat on a centralized repository."

"The reverse engineering in Oracle Databases needs improvement, as there are issues."

"There is a lack of local support in the China region."

"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'd really like to see the PDF function become available. It would make my life much easier than what it is at the moment because whenever I need to collaborate with people that do not have erwin, I have to go through the wonkiness of going to Word and then save it from Word into PDF. There's a lot of differences between erwin 4.4 and 2020."

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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 expensive."

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

"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."

"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."

"This solution is expensive for some people's budgets and they need to offer a Lite version at a cheaper price"

"The cost of Avolution ABACUS is reasonable, given the features they offer in comparison to other tools."

More Avolution ABACUS pricing and cost advice

"We've continued to use the product for many years and compared it with others on the market. The pricing is reasonable considering what the solution offers and what we pay. There are cheaper tools, but they may not be as robust and easy to use, so it's worth the money."

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

"The primary reasons that erwin was selected were that it was much more affordable for us [than Embarcadero] and it was easily maintainable."

"The pricing of the solution is cheap. I rate the pricing a five out of ten."

"I don't specifically know what we're paying now. About three years ago, in another organization, I have this memory of 6,000 AUD a seat or something like that, but I am not sure. In the mid-2000s, it was something like 1,200 AUD a seat. I get the impression that there was a price jump when it was spun off from CA as a separate company, which is understandable, but it could sometimes be a barrier in some organizations picking it up. I haven't talked to erwin people yet, but I'm going to suggest to them that they could perhaps think of having an entry-level product that is priced a bit lower, and then, you can buy the extra suite."

"The price should be lower in order to be on the same level as its competitors."

"Likewise, the solution is a little pricey."

"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."

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Government

13%

Computer Software Company

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

19%

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...

See all answers

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?

The solution's model mark could be better because it crashes sometimes.

See all answers

Comparisons

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs Avolution ABACUS

Compared 25% of the time

LeanIX vs Avolution ABACUS

Compared 22% of the time

MEGA HOPEX vs Avolution ABACUS

Compared 15% of the time

Visio vs Avolution ABACUS

Compared 12% of the time

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SAP PowerDesigner vs erwin Data Modeler by Quest

Compared 29% of the time

IDERA ER/Studio vs erwin Data Modeler by Quest

Compared 17% of the time

Lucidchart vs erwin Data Modeler by Quest

Compared 15% of the time

Visio vs erwin Data Modeler by Quest

Compared 10% of the time

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs erwin Data Modeler by Quest

Compared 8% of the time

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Avolution ABACUS

January 2025

Download Avolution ABACUS product report

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Modeler by Quest

January 2025

Download erwin Data Modeler by Quest product report

Also Known As

No data available

erwin DM

Learn More

Avolution

erwin by Quest

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.

erwin pioneered data modeling, and erwin Data Modeler (erwin DM) remains trusted, award-winning software for data modeling and database design, automating complex and time-consuming tasks. Use it to discover and document any data from anywhere for consistency, clarity and artifact reuse across large-scale data integration, master data management, metadata management, Big Data, business intelligence and analytics initiatives – all while supporting data governance and intelligence efforts.

Sample Customers

Barclays

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

Buyer's Guide

Avolution ABACUS vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest

January 2025

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