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Avolution ABACUS vs Visio comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (8th)
Visio
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
105
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (1st), Mind Mapping Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Avolution ABACUS and Visio aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Avolution ABACUS is designed for Enterprise Architecture Management and holds a mindshare of 3.9%, down 4.9% compared to last year.
Visio, on the other hand, focuses on Business Process Design, holds 12.4% mindshare, down 13.6% since last year.
Enterprise Architecture Management
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

JoseCamacho - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
Tugrul TASCI - PeerSpot reviewer
We have seen return on investment in the form of time savings but should have more design tools
I am generally using Visio to create some diagrams Visio should implement more complex tools or graphics to facilitate processing and use flexible templates. It should allow users to easily drag and drop some previously created diagrams. The tools supplied or provided are very basic, and there…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"If you face new challenges or issues then you can dynamically customize according to the business needs."
"You can design using a diagram tool installed on your desktop, a key difference from other vendors."
"The most valuable feature is that it has a customizable meta-model, which is key."
"Scalable and stable tool for roadmapping and modeling, with a good dashboard, end-to-end impact analysis, and portfolio management."
"There are a lot of different features, but the business/decision-maker feature, visibility, and dashboards are most valuable."
"Avolution ABACUS allows for flexible enterprise architecture analysis."
"Avolution ABACUS allows for flexible enterprise architecture analysis."
"I like all the features. I go online, and everything pops there. It is in the cloud, and everything is there. Even if there is a crash, everything is still there. I don't lose anything. That's what is the most valuable and likable. It is really a professional solution for designing. The designs look really nice in the PDF."
"Visio makes it easy to communicate your ideas from several areas of your imagination across several domains."
"It's a very meat and potatoes type of product and isn't overly designed. It's very easy to find your way through the solution, as it's not too complicated."
"What I like about it is that the templates are easily findable and usable, and they are usually created for other software packages. It seems to be pretty much widely adopted in the industry."
"The most valuable feature is the set of diagramming tools."
"The most valuable aspect of Visio is enabling comprehensive coverage of architectural elements."
"I like the solution's ease of use and its the integration with different templates from a variety of manufacturers."
"It is very easy for people to start using this tool, and we can import Visio templates that are already published by vendors such as Azure without any issue."
 

Cons

"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."
"The company needs to update the UML version they are using for the product as it is quite old."
"While Avolution ABACUS is flexible, it can be complex to work with as it requires knowledge of specific configurations to customize the product."
"It is vastly scalable but you can't run it on a Mac or Linux so it has limitations."
"The reporting could be easier to configure."
"It doesn't have the simulation capability, which would be helpful in doing some business process analysis and improvements."
"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 big downside to Visio is that it's very difficult to push the design through to Power Automate, to become a workflow that you can use."
"It could use easier custom icon sets."
"The solution should be included in Microsoft Office 365. For some reason, it's not. It should be bundled in with everything else."
"An area for improvement in Visio is pricing. It's a costly tool for my company because it only uses Visio occasionally."
"The solution could improve by making it more modern."
"It can be complex. If you don't know a little bit about it, it can get really confusing."
"The solution could improve by having more integration."
"I think that it feels a bit outside with respect to the icons that are available."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is expensive for some people's budgets and they need to offer a Lite version at a cheaper price"
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"It is expensive."
"The yearly cost is approximately $400 CAD ($300 USD)."
"You can purchase a corporate license for more users to use the solution. We have purchased a stand-alone license and which could be cheaper."
"The pricing of Visio is much better. It has a free version of the cheapest functionality which is enough for us."
"Our license for Visio is including with the Office 365 subscription."
"We have about 10 to 15 people with Visio licenses in my company, but I wasn't involved in the direct negotiation of the prices since this was taken care of by my administrative office."
"You have to purchase a license to use the solution."
"We're in a Visio plan that is like $15 a month per user. At the moment, it is just the standard licensing fees that I'm aware of."
"We pay annually for the Visio license and it is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Government
13%
Computer Software Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

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...
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...
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...
How easy is it to migrate process flow charts (modeled using tools like Visio) into Bizagi?
I have been using Bizagi with a major project for a state government agency for about four years now. It is pretty straightforward to load in files that are BPMN 2.0 compliant. The option to load V...
What do you like most about Visio?
The diagrams Visio creates are quite impressive in the sense that we can cooperate with more colleagues in one task and see the flow of the process.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Visio?
One of the main problems with Visio is its licensing options and associated issues, which lead to discussions about the price with a Microsoft representative. If asked to rate the price, I would gi...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Visio
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays
Thomas College, Hamburg Port Authority, Portigon AG, Conseil G_n_ral du d_partement des Hautes-Alpes, AAA Auto a. s., Commonwealth Financial Network, ICA, Abu Dhabi National Energy Company
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