MEGA HOPEX Reviews

We use the product for application portfolio management. We capture a list of applications and draw architecture diagrams. 

We use the portfolio management feature heavily. 

The tool's UI should be more user-friendly. 

I have been working with the product for two years. 

The solution is stable. 

We have ten users for the product. 

We don't have direct tech support. We avail support through a system integrator. 

Neutral

We had faced some issues with the tool's setup and it took a few days to configure and deploy. 

I would rate the product a seven out of ten. You need to explore other options before selecting this product. 

The most valuable feature of the tool is its ability to provide line of sight from Buinsess Outcome (Service to be delivered) down to how the resources are configured and connected to make it happen. Understanding how the Business and technology align to provide the organizational ability to deliver the niche that it plays in in our environment.

It does this by allowing us to capture the business process, business elements, and the technology elements and create relationships between them.

The ability to create diagrams and documents that tell the right story is a key feature. With this product we are able to produce reports that take architecturally modeled information and produce System Design Guides that are foundational for our organization to certify and accredit our Investments. The ability of the report to "walk the architecture" and pull out relevant ports, protocol, and Service information related to which client applications are talking to which servers helps validate what firewall ports need to be opened, etc.

It started improving visibility and provided us a better picture of technology dependencies. It has allowed us to better document what the business needs and more cleanly identify the technologies that are going to be needed to support the business needs. It has allowed us to have a cleaner picture of how technology is expected to help the business and reduce redundant technology provided functionality accross the organization.

Stability is definitely a critical thing.

Organizations can not afford to have to be rebooting production systems to add a user or to reset a users session. It needs to be more self-healing.

The intuitiveness of the interface.

The ability for the tool to guide a user through a process to ensure architectural changes are made based on knowledge of modeling and business rules, especially where they are complex is very critical to ensuring an manageable architecture. This is especially true when an organization does not have individuals with a deep knowledge of the tool.

We have used this product both pre-web version and the beta versions of Hopex.

Stability has gotten much better.

We have used Hopex since it was beta. V1R1 was very unstable, it required multiple reboots a day. These were reboots of the applications and did not normally require a server reboot. With V1R2 Hopex became much more stable. V1R3 for the most part has been stable platform.

Because of our architectureal needs we tend to be more on the bleeding edge of their product than a lot of others are willing to be. This means we have identified more issues with Hopex than some of the other customers. The Department of Defense (DOD) in general, tends to have tighter security and configuration requirements. This means that we have pushed Mega to have to readdress some security design issues that other customers may not have found to be a concern.

In many cases Mega has been fairly responsive to addresses product defects. Not all of them have happened in what I would consider a timely manner. Unfortunately, some things that were identified were not be released until two or three versions down. If there is a functional issue that really is a pain point, a broken feature, and you hear that it is not going to get it fixed for four months, this really creates a business issue. They have sped it up in some cases. Some of the issues are due to the time difference as the corporate offices are in france which means they historically have not always got the responses back in as timely a manner as I think should be applicable.

In the current version, we still have to clean up processes on a weekly basis. Comparatively speaking, from version 1 release 1 to version 1 release 3 it's much more stable product, but overall, it's still not where I would expect it to be as far as stability.

It is hard for us to provide a reflective answer to scalability as we have on average, 3 or 4 editors working in the system making changes at any given time and only 20ish people accessing Hopex in a read-only role. That's not really what I would consider a scalability test.

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We contact technical support pretty routinely. The technical support guys in the United States are very responsive. They are knowledgeable. They do a great job of capturing the information and they coordinate with the corporate resources that they need to to try to address the issues. Where they can provide resolution quickly, they have done so. Where not, they have said, "Okay, we have passed it on to the right individuals. They are looking at it." At that point, there's not much more that the local tech support can do.

When we started the process back in 2011, I did a contract and had a support team and they went through the Gartner Quadrant. They identified Mega, Troux System Architect and two others, I can't remember the other names of them. We basically identified what we wanted to accomplish with the tool and identified a set of metrics that we can sit down and ask them questions to walk them to scenarios. Then did an evaluation and then did a selection.

Overall I would say that this platform, addresses the needs better than other solutions we have looked at, it requires less support. We only have myself and one other administrator that support it.

We have a very in-depth knowledge of the behind-the-scenes workings of the solution. I do know from personal experience that other solutions have more significant footprint of resources that would have to support it. From database people to administrators, etc.

Overall rating: 7-8 (out of 10). Stability is one shortfall and it's probably the major one. I would probably take somewhere between a point and a point and a half off for that. The other one is just the interface. The fact that we have to do some things through the full client on the server as opposed to being able to do everything from a web interface management platform is in the reach of another half a point to a point.

Know what you are trying to accomplish with it, to know what you need, and whether it can truly provide what you need. The best outcome that you can get is that you have that view into how everything is tied together. In other words, what should be out there in the architecture or what should be out there in the environment and what should be providing to support to support the business.

The most valuable features for us are related to business processes.

The features are limited. I'm hoping in the future the solution will be bigger and include more items. Right now, overall, it needs more.

I've been using the solution for three years so far.

At first, the solution wasn't too stable. It's improved. Now it's okay.

The solution is scalable. If a company needs to expand it, it's completely possible to do so. 

We only have one person currently working on the solution.

The initial implementation has a moderate amount of difficulty. It's mostly easy, but there were a few items in the release I implemented that were challenging. 

Deployment took us about three days. It didn't take too long.

The licensing is on a yearly basis. I'm not sure exactly what the yearly costs are, as I don't handle this aspect of the solution. I believe it may be around $2,000-$3,000.

We're only customers. We aren't partners or resellers of the solution.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're currently using.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. The solution is one of the best. We've been very happy with it.

My primary use case is managing enterprise architecture design.

The most valuable parts of this solution are the richness of its features and its easy interface.

This product is expensive and would be improved by lowering its price.

I've been using this solution for two years.

I've had no problems or glitches with the stability.

There have been no issues with scalability.

The setup was pretty straightforward.

Before implementing, make sure to do your due diligence on the whole enterprise. I would give this solution a score of nine out of ten.

Currently, we are just using the business model's architecture and MEGA's architecture.

The IT portfolio is the most useful feature. The IT portfolio management is becoming more advanced and more easy for the IT management to generate revenue, to see the gaps within management with the portfolio management application. However, in the end, we didn't use it. I could not convince our management to implement the solution, even though I thought it seemed interesting.

The solution is really expensive. I sent this same feedback six months ago. I told them they have a lot of opportunities in the Middle East to fill the small and medium businesses niche, even using the cloud. But, the product is very, very costly. 

They do tend to push people to their professional services, instead of helping the customers with their problems. I understand this is their business. At the same time, however, they need to work on fact sheets or offer some program to help the customers who want to implement it themselves and to make it run properly in their environment. The company seems only interested in selling and not customer satisfaction. I'm not asking for anything for free, I'm just asking them to invest a bit in helping their customers implement their technology correctly.

The documentation needs to be more clearly explained. The documentation gives the customers an indication that everything is available, but when they buy the module, they discover that the pieces that they are looking for are not available in the current module, or that they are available in a different module. Then, the user needs to buy a different module or use professional services even though they thought these items were included. It's confusing.

I can't speak for it on a large-scale since we only used it on a smaller scale, but we didn't face a lot of issues. What problems we did have, the security team dealt with easily, so we didn't have many issues at all. It's good.

Technical support is very good. However, they are limited. They cannot support me further because we actually need their professional services, which I cannot access at this point. You need to pay for it. Sometimes, if I try to make some customization they inform me that it's actually a professional service and they redirect me to that community instead. The community website is not mature. It's okay, but it doesn't offer the help I need. If it is a small customization for a POC, they should still be able to help without charging the company. I understand that some customizations need professional services, but these customizations help you sustain your technology within the environment, and the company should want to help ensure the customer is satisfied with the tech.

Previously, I just used Excel and Visio.

The initial setup was straightforward. With configuration, customizing or prepping the data and deployment, it took about one year to set up. We only needed two people to deploy and maintain the solution: one business architect and someone who specializes in customization and operations.

Since we set up the solution, then stopped working on it, then started again, we had to reconfigure everything. I created a new environment and I installed the new version and I migrated the old version over. The solution's technical support assisted with the migration when we re-started using the solution over the past year.

The solution is very expensive, and the company constantly directs users to their professional services, which also costs money.

We don't use the solution on a large scale. We mainly just use it in the IT department. We're using the on-premises deployment solution.

Originally, about two years ago, we set up the solution, then we froze work on it. Recently we started it up again, but it needed to re-configure the solution because our business requirements had changed.

MEGA typically exceeds most of the needs of a client in terms of what they offer.

As for advice to others considering using this solution, I'd say this: you need to study the modules and to match them to your business requirements before you begin so you don't buy something you don't need or won't use. Make sure you know what you need before entering into an agreement.

I would rate the solution at eight out of ten but they need to enhance their way of filling the modules because as of right now, it's not ideal for the customer.

ITPM – It provides a central location to manage our technology portfolio and standards/governance.

It provides a central repository of all architecture artifacts as well as application inventory. It has made it easier to do impact analysis. It’s slowly becoming the authoritative source of current state application architecture.

We would like the reporting and analytics, road mapping, import/export functionality, and data modelling capabilities to be improved.

It was a bit challenging to convert our old Mega licensing model to the new Hopex licensing model which is at a more granular level. Managing the new licenses and roles was difficult on the initial setup.

There were no issues with the stability.

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

Overall, they have good support.

We evaluated other EA tools but we already had Mega in-house and continued to use it.

Fairly straightforward. There were some steps in the documentation that were not clear but with tech support’s help we overcame the issues.

We implemented it in-house with an enterprise architect and system administrator working together. We developed an implementation plan before starting the initial deployment and/or upgrade.

Mega needs to simplify their licensing model more like other leading EA tools in the market.

Collect accurate and up-to-date data about your environment before implementing an EA tool. Have an approach in terms of what objects to create in the tool in what order. Set up a sandbox environment to familiarize the architects and other users with the tool. Avoid creating extraneous objects in the production environment; start with small set of objects and artifacts that add value and will be used.

We use this solution for capability assessment and modeling business processes.

This solution provides a shared repository for EA artifacts and enterprise components.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the reuse of common enterprise components and entities.

The tool usability is weak and it also has a high learning curve.

As a business and process analyst, I found the Mega Process module very powerful. Since Hopex is an integrated architecture, it was possible to depict business processes with BPMN notation, and identify every system that participated in the process then generate the application architecture. It is also possible to generate textual procedures from the process models with Mega Process, and it is possible to export all processes to the enterprise architecture (TOGAF) module if needed.

As a consultant, I implemented Mega Process in different enterprises. For example, you create a process referential, which means, you depict the general cartography and all the subsequent levels (process layers), until the finest level. You're able to see all these levels in one space, using the the drill down technique to spread them, and see all the details for each process the process referential can be shown to every SME or users by installing the publisher module.

The most important thing to be improved is the reliability. Mega should pay more attention because from time to time, the screen freezes or the application stops working without saving the work.

I've used it for more than 14 months.

I've had no issues with the deployment, and I've done three.

I've had no issues with the stability.

I've had no issues scaling it for our needs.

9/10 - They were very useful.

9/10 - They were very useful.

I used to use the AG BPM solution, and it wasn't my decision to switch.

The initial setup was a bit tricky, because Mega made a strong security procedure to avoid hacking their solution, but after a few times, the process become pretty clear.

As a reseller, I implement the solution with the help of the vendor in the client environment, so I am not very aware about the Mega Hopex architecture and technical view.

I found the price in the middle range of these kinds of products.

Before implementation, you will find it useful to visit the Mega community website https://community.mega.com/. I found it very helpful on many occasions, for example, you can find many tips about the implementation.