iServer Reviews

We use iServer to manage our artifacts and governance.

Central repository holding single version of truth.

We really like the governance.

The modelling needs improvement, specifically forecasting capabilities and scenarios. The existing capabilities have integration with the office, and it's flaky.

We have been using this solution for two years. The version we're using is not the latest. It is deployed on-premises.

It is stable, but there are a few parts that require areas of improvement.

It is scalable because we have an enterprise setup. It is up to us to scale up or not. If you go for cloud, it's highly scalable, but we are not exploring that. We have over 50 people using this solution, mostly architects, business analysts and solution designers. It requires one person for maintenance, usually a technical expert with DBS skills.

The technical support is very good. They are responsive and have a good customer portal to interact with. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

We used Archimate before this solution. We switched because Archimate didn't have the governance capabilities we were looking for, and iServer does the governance well.

It was a low-complexity installation, and it took a couple of hours. We have a mix of skills, so we used in-house skills for some parts and experts with special skills for others.

We have an annual contract. I can't share the details of the costs.

I rate this solution a seven out of ten. I would recommend this solution to others, and they should include modelling capabilities and forecasting based on scenario in the next release.

We primarily use iServer for architecture.

I do not find it friendly to use.

iServer needs to be more business-focused.

It needs to be more conceptual.

Requirements management needs to be improved.

I have been using iServer for a few years.

I have not experienced any issues with management, the dashboard, or the interface. It's a stable product.

This is a scalable solution.

We have not had any issues that required us to contact technical support.

The initial setup is easy.

I was not responsible for the deployment. It was set up by other people.

This is not a product that I recommend for business process design tasks.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.

We use this solution mainly for enterprise solution architecture as well as modeling and development.

I have to think less with this solution. It's simple.

The one issue is that if you want to import predefined work, you need to put the licensing model in. So if you wanted to import work that was done before, you then need to buy a separate product for that. That was a problem.

I would also like them to add data-driven modeling.

It was super stable.

We haven't tested the scalability yet. We have about six users using it at the same time, every day. Everything we did, we did on the platform.

The technical support is excellent. They have a complete customer support deployed.

I used Casewise before. iServer is a lot more flexible than Casewise, however. 

It was quite simple to set up, once you've done the training. It was important to get the training done before we could make any changes to the configuration and set up.

We worked with it for a bit before we actually had the training. It would have been easier to get going with the training first, but that was just an operational issue. We just didn't have the time to do the training.

It was quick to deploy this solution. The deployment was the service, because it's a cloud-based solution. They did the deployment and I had an issue with the performance because the solution was hosted in the UK. I asked them to move it to South Africa and that happened over a weekend. That is quite quick, so I was really happy about that.

It's a cloud based solution, so they did it completely by themselves. We just agreed on when and how it would happen and they did it.

First, decide on the deployment model. Secondly, I would recommend doing the training first. iServer is very easy to learn by yourself, but you can get stuff done quicker if you do the training before you start using it.

I would rate it as eight out of ten. If they added data-driven modeling, I would rate it as a nine or ten.

iServer is a solution that helps catalog enterprise architect solutions and catalog information.

You have to spend about 14 to 15 days learning it, but once you learn it, it is easy to use.

The best features are the reporting and graphs, which result from the reporting. 

It definitely needs help to improve the visual aspect of the solution. 

If they could help assist the user towards an architecture roadmap, that would be ideal.

The product is very stable. 

It is scalable.

From September 2014 through January 2015, I received help from the tech support staff of iServer. They were very prompt and almost instantaneously responded. If it was something difficult, they brought three to four people to talk with me, then solved the problem. Within minutes, they were able to solve the issue.

It was an easy setup. The installation was smooth for us.

There are other solutions out there that have a better user interface.

I love how there are no milestone swimlanes. The only swimlanes are business role swimlanes which makes process mapping easier and easy to read.

It has helped having data lineage in the business cluster, which is used as control artifacts.

The ability to add information behind each activity shapes to show which attributes it contains. E.g., frequency, automation, systems, etc.

When presenting the process map to businesses:

• Cannot see which activities are control activities.
• There is no way of displaying a procedure manual for the process map, which would contain the detailed steps of what happens in each activity.
• Naming the business role swimlanes with the actual roles people perform tends to be difficult, because they may have multiple roles or multiple people perform a variety of activities in one swimlane.
• The intermediate event is confusing or difficult to explain to businesses when to use it.
• The use of an organisation pool brings about a different interpretation of what levels do in the organisation.

Since July 2016.

No, I have not.

I have not encountered any issues with scalability.

My client support has been great. Always ready to assist.

Yes. We were using Blueworks. We had to switch due to disinvestment.

Dealing with a new concept, it was a little bit complex. However, you get used to it.

I would not be able to advise with regards to licensing and pricing, because I have no knowledge of it.

No, I did not.

Understand what is the objective of using this system. If you just want to draw a process map, I would advise using Visio.

We use iServer as an enterprise architecture tool.

The most valuable feature is the language used for architecture modeling.

This tool is simple to use.

This is a flexible tool compared to some other solutions.

The performance is slow, which is something that should be improved.

Implementing business processes could be improved.

I would like to see a map of all of the processes drawn automatically. You can do it now but you need to do it manually.

I have been using iServer for about one year.

The stability is pretty good. iServer is used on an occasional basis.

This solution is easy to scale. However, scalability is dependent on multiple things.

Our organization is a large enterprise-level company.

I have been in touch with technical support and the service is fine.

Prior to this solution, we used IBM System Architect. iServer provides greater flexibility.

The vendor assisted with our implementation and deployment.

We have an in-house team that takes care of maintenance.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Integrating the Microsoft documents to the product and visualization matrix where we can see the end-to-end relationship of the network is of great importance to our company.

We have uploaded all the internal documents to the tool. We are able to see the impact analysis in real-time if any component goes down.

More visualization techniques and ways to report the data might be helpful.

Two years.

Yes, we have had issues with stability.

No issues.

A seven out of 10 for technical support.

No, we did not previously use a different solution.

Setting up the Portal was very complex. We required a lot of support from the vendor.

We did not evaluate other options.

Surprisingly little.

It hasn't really improved the way our organisation functions. iServer provides a repository for the reuse of objects, but that is about all that is of use. It means we may save some time from not having to retype things, but the overhead of maintaining these objects is quite large. There is supposed to be features around impact assessments (i.e., what systems are being used by what), but that reporting is a bit clunky, and hence not used very often, if at all. Because the system relies on using Visio, and there is no live-link between them, the repository and what is displayed in Visio must be checked out and refreshed to reflect changes.

The display of relationships between objects is not automatic if they exist in the repository.

I've used it for 12 months.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

7/10 as the customer service is quite good, however, unfortunately the product itself isn't.

7/10.

We used Visio/PowerPoint. I'm not sure of the value of the switch, and if I had my way, I'd switch back.

It was straightforward.

We used a vendor team.

It's supposed to make us more efficient, but that hasn't been borne out during use.

I don't know the setup costs, but it's day to day ones are negligible.

Overall, I would say that it's a poor man's EA repository. It seems like a good idea, but doesn't really work in practice. It's really two components, Visio and the iServer repository, and there is no live-link between them, so the Visio diagrams can be out-of-date. Don't implement it, you should stick with Visio, as this is a solution that ends up having the worst of both worlds.