BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs erwin Data Modeler by Quest comparison

BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest

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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

BiZZdesign HoriZZon

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

6th

Ranking in Business Process Design

9th

Average Rating

7.6

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

Ranking in Business Process Design

10th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of BiZZdesign HoriZZon is 5.1%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Data Modeler by Quest is 10.2%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Architecture Management

Featured Reviews

BijoyTalukder

Enterprise Architect at Tata Consultancy

Helps to get a clear overview of our enterprise architecture, especially when dealing with multiple departments

One area where BiZZdesign HoriZZon could use some improvement is in its REST APIs. While the platform offers REST APIs, they have limitations when it comes to retrieving and exporting data. Obtaining detailed information at the individual application or component level, including IDs, costs, and deployment-related data, can be challenging through these APIs. This limitation makes it difficult to smoothly export such granular data. I have raised this issue with the BiZZdesign team, and they expressed interest in addressing it, but I'm not aware of the current status of this improvement effort. Nonetheless, improving the usability and flexibility of the REST APIs for data extraction is an area that could enhance the platform's capabilities.

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Saswata Mondal

Director Data Science at a media company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The creation of data models is easy and quick, and the fitting model is very intuitive

The ease and quick ability to create the model is valuable. The fitting model is very intuitive. The other cool feature is the reverse engineer feature. If we connect to the database, we can reverse engineer from the database itself of the physical model. That gives us the relationship of the data if not much documentation is available.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Among the valuable features is the ability to document standards. For example, we have mandatory operating standards that need to be followed by every application and every architecture. We use things like table charts and pie charts for documenting the costs incurred across the systems. All of these are good features."

"I used BiZZdesign HoriZZon at two organizations. At Manchester Metropolitan University, I used it with a small team for architectural modeling of the student record system. We modeled teams, process objects, and their interactions with applications. We also used it to model a gradual rollout with plateaus showing migration over time. At the BBC, I used it to model software services for publishing content online. I showed key model views to senior stakeholders using Horizon, allowing them to modify and score applications and services."

"The enterprise studio where the modelling happens is valuable."

"One of the main advantages of this solution is that they have representation in the Open Group Forum, which means that any changes in ArchiMate are immediately implemented in BiZZdesign."

"The feature I find most valuable is that the start times and loading times are short. It takes only a few seconds to load the repository and whenever I want to open diagrams, they are there almost immediately."

"I like the flexibility of the modeling part for standards like ArchiMate and, at the same time, BPMN. It allows us to connect elements from different areas and to have a single repository and a single source of truth. It gives us one place to do analysis throughout the organization."

"BiZZdesign HoriZZon is scalable, and I'd give it an eight out of ten for scalability. Our customers are enterprise level companies, but the solution is suitable for small and mid-sized companies as well."

"It is very easy to use. I can just click on an application component and find out if we are using this particular component. This provides us flexibility."

More BiZZdesign HoriZZon pros

"Any tool will do diagramming but I think the ability to put the stuff up in a graphical fashion, then think about it, and keep things consistent is what's valuable about it. It's too easy when you're using other methods to not have naming consistent standards and column consistent definitions, et cetera."

"The most valuable features are the ability to reverse engineer and do model comparison. With the reverse engineering, I can understand the databases from third-party products. With the model comparison, I can track the differences between two versions of the same database."

"The solution is good for organizing the data and the scripting part is very powerful. It's easy to create technical scripts for models."

"erwin has versioning so you can keep versions, over time, of those models and you can compare any version to any version. If you're looking at a specific database and you want to see what changed over time, that's really useful. You can go back to a different version or connect that to your change-control processes so you can see what was released when."

"We use the macros with naming standards patterns, domains, datatypes, and some common attributes. As far as other automations, a feature of the Bulk Editor is mass updates. When it sees something is nonstandard or inaccurate, it will export the better data out. Then, I can easily see which entities and attributes are not inline or standard. I can easily make changes to what was uploaded to the Bulk Editor. When taking on a new project, it can save you about a half a day on a big project across an entire team."

"Another feature of erwin is that it can help you enforce your naming standards. It has little modules that you can set up and, as you're building the data model, it's ensuring that they conform to the naming standards that you've developed."

"The principal feature that I liked is that the solution has a very graphic interface."

"We use the Forward and Reverse Engineering tools to help us speed things up and create things that would have to be done otherwise by hand. E.g., getting a database into a data model format or vice versa."

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest pros

Cons

"There could be simpler modelling."

"One area where BiZZdesign HoriZZon could use some improvement is in its REST APIs."

"In HoriZZon, there are different matrices. In some of the cases, there is an option to aggregate them, but in other cases, we have not done this, e.g., to see the proper costs. For example, if I have 10 different matrices, then I need to create an aggregate view out of those 10 matrices somewhere. That is where we have been struggling a bit. We have a counterpart from the HoriZZon product team with whom we have bi-weekly discussions. We have suggested to him that this can be improved."

"The automatic data collection and interface need improvement."

"I have seen table charts where, if the chart is a little too big, it does not fit in HoriZZon and it is not at all visible... There have been several times where we could not publish a chart properly and we had to break the chart into small tables and create multiple artifacts, creating a complete mess. This should be seriously taken up by BiZZdesign because there is a lot of scope for improvement in terms of usability. It's not at all good, unfortunately."

"Integration definitely needs improvement. There are some restrictions. We've seen that it doesn't integrate with everything we might expect."

"The ability to generate charts and deal with a use case involving Kibana was quite difficult."

"The repository of duplicate objects is bad."

More BiZZdesign HoriZZon cons

"I would like to see more support for working with the big-data world. There are so many new databases evolving and it's very hard for them to keep up with all of the new technologies. It would be good if they were able to dynamically support big-data platforms, other than Hive and Teradata."

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

"erwin is not as robust as a data warehousing project I've been on in the past."

"The only real complaint I have is the time it takes to do a database comparison on a large model. If they could speed that up, that would be the only thing I can think of that needs improvement."

"I would like to see the ability to support more NoSQL platforms more quickly. In addition, enhancing the graphics to render more quickly would be beneficial for any user."

"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."

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

"It would be nice to have it on the Linux platform, not just Windows. If they can support Linux, there would be a huge market for it."

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing model is slightly on the high side and could be more competitive for long-term partnerships."

"The price is reasonable."

"If one is very cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product price as a seven out of ten."

"I haven't found any issues with the scalability and licensing parts that are access-related."

"In terms of this particular product usage, my clients currently only use per-user licenses."

"[The] Orbus... pricing model was based on every single functionality having a price. The pricing was comparable but if we wanted to scale, it would have ended up being a lot more expensive. BiZZdesign gave us one price with all of the functionality, and we could scale as much as we needed."

"We were customers and bought licenses from them. We used their remote instance initially but upgraded to the on-device version due to lag. For pricing, we paid about 2200 pounds a year per seat for the client installation at an educational rate. I'm not sure about commercial rates. I managed to get a free copy at BBC since it was for evaluation purposes."

"First and foremost within the scope of improvement for the solution would be the cost. It's very costly..."

"The tool is expensive."

"There is either a one-year or three-year license. It is not a pay-as-you-go license like a SaaS solution. It’s more of a traditional licensing. They are a little bit on the pricier side."

"Pricing is very high compared to any other product."

"The price of erwin Data Modeler is very expensive, in particular for this part of the world."

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

"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"erwin is expensive compared to other solutions. We are paying almost $6,000 per seat a month."

"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."

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

10%

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 BiZZdesign HoriZZon?

This is one of the best tools, especially because of its collaborative nature. Anyone using it can access previous projects and related data. It's definitely a strong collaborative tool.

What needs improvement with BiZZdesign HoriZZon?

There is room for improvement in BiZZdesign HoriZZon. It's quite robust and has good online forums where people discuss it, though maybe the interface can improve, but I don't want to criticize it ...

What is your primary use case for BiZZdesign HoriZZon?

The typical use case with BiZZdesign HoriZZon is basically for enterprise architecture and also for business process modeling.

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.

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.

What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

As a documenting tool, it's solid, though its reporting could be more robust. The reporting mechanisms could be more intuitive regarding report creation. It can generate reports in CSV files, displ...

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Product Reports

BiZZdesign HoriZZon

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erwin Data Modeler by Quest

Download erwin Data Modeler by Quest product report

Also Known As

HoriZZon

erwin DM

Overview

Make smarter decisions and optimize outcomes by unifying all your strategy, capabilities, operating models and change portfolios in a single platform.

With all the data about your business in one place you can see the big picture and make properly informed strategic decisions to drive growth. Bizzdesign Horizzon brings together strategy, IT architecture, operating models, data, capabilities, change portfolios and ideas into a single, intuitive collaborative business design platform. Real-time visibility of key metrics and trends allows you to take action more quickly. Accelerating the speed and accuracy of your operations now – and into the future.

Core Platform Capabilities:

Multi-discipline collaboration
Data Integration
Advanced analytics
Models and Roadmaps
Governance & Security
Business Insight Graph

BiZZdesign

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.

erwin by Quest

Sample Customers

T-Mobile, Shell, HSBC, Erasmus University, VIVAT Insurance

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

BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest