Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect Reviews

• ArchiMate - motivational modeling for requirements management
• ArchiMate - business modeling
• Achrimate - information system modelling
• UML - data modeling and use case modelling
• BPMN - business process modelling

It is now based on business drivers, goals and requirements, and linked to business and IT functions. This results in traceability and alignment with business objectives.

• Modeling could be more user-friendly
• ArchiMate - support for derived relations
• Define features and attributes as separate components
• More flexible document generation features

I've used it for around four years.

No issues encountered.

Not in the more recent versions.

No issues encountered.

We had no issues and questions were answered satisfactorily.

We had no issues.

Before I used IBM Rational Rose. I switched because of my move from IBM to another employer.

It was straightforward. It was very easy to setup a new repository from scratch. The tool offers sufficient flexibility to alter the structure.

We've done it in-house.

The ROI is hard to express, as it's indirect and hard to quantify the benefits such as quality improvement. Based on personal productivity, the professional edition it has resulted in over an 100% ROI.

It has low license cost in comparison to other tools. The floating user license works fine for us.

Other solutions were exclude based on pricing.

Take into account it as a rather technical oriented product. It lacks a number of EA features such as ERM, PPM, APM etc. However, ArchiMate does provide some functionality in this field.

In terms of product features, I'm very happy with the support for UML 2 diagrams, Archimate, TOGAF and the collaboration capability using a RDBMS back-end. Because EA supports multiple models, the whole architecture team can collaborate using the same tool and develop our models from requirements to deployment on a shared repository.

The user interface could be more intuitive and support for a Mac, iOS or at least a browser version would be very welcomed.

I've been using Sparx EA for the last four years.

No - Caveat: I did not take part of the deployment but I am also not aware of any significant challenges.

Yes. I've had some issues when using a NFS backed but it was on an older version of the product.

Availability - No, but I should caveat that I've only experienced working with teams of up to 10 colleagues.

Never had the need to contact them directly.

Never had the need to contact them directly.

I've used MS Visio before but the tools are not really comparable.

Straightforward - Caveat: I did not take part of the deployment but I am also not aware of any significant challenges

In both cases, the deployment and implementation was done by internal IT.

It's hard to calculate ROI on a product that is used within a function that is a cost center but it's fairly easy to acknowledge that EA has paid itsef many times over in terms of hours saved for the team.

The setup consists of a team license hosted on a network share and a RDBMS back-end. EA is installed locally on the desktops of the users.

It's a very decent product, but if all you are required to do is produce "box diagrams" then Sparx EA will be overkill.

We use Enterprise Architect for application inventory and rationalization.

The modeling tool is targeted toward a sophisticated user.

I have been using Enterprise Architect for a year.

Enterprise Architect is stable.

Sparx technical support is good. 

The tool fits best within the IT realm vs Business. I would advise against using the tool when deployed within a collaborative environment with business users.

I want a solution that can interface with Jira and Confluence, both of which my customers have, as well as with that of Bizagi.

A feature I like most about Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is its ease of use. 

My customers use Bizagi, although I do not. I don't want to change this. What should be improved, however, are the integration capabilities of the solution with Bizagi. 

I work with IBM in enterprise architecture as the project manager. I used to use IBM Rational System Architect. I can now see as a consultant what I am able to offer the customer, not only that of IBM, of course. I am currently seeking solutions other than IBM. 

I previously used other tools, such as IBM's enterprise architect, although the tool has since been sold and the company changed. The IBM tool offers certain customization features which are not found in Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, although I can live with what it has at the moment. 

Since all the staff is already trained in Bizagi and find it easy to use, I do not wish to change this, but only to load all the processes from it to Sparx. This is my approach. 

The Bizagi model is only for process. It is not an enterprise architect tool. Only Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, but not Bizagi, allows one to make diagrams and metrics, to examine the relationship between all the elements.

The way one can set up relationships between components. When doing architecture this helps to determine impact on the IT landscape when components are removed, moved and changed.

For software architecture the UML components are a great help. It also helps when creating code from the diagrams.

From an architectural point of view it is easy to define the application landscape and maintain the relationships between components. This helps when the current state application architecture is considered especially by architects new to an organisation. It also assists the embedded architects to design the future state architecture more effectively.

The UX/UI seems a bit dated and clunky and I would like to see a refresh of this. The application UX does not align to the newest design principles one can find on the web these days. It might also be time to adapt EA to work in a mobile environment (tablets not phones). The Information architecture aspects of the product is also not as strong as it can be but still offers good value for money.

I've been using it for two years.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

We have had no issues with the stability.

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

I personally have not used any of the customer service offered as I have been able to resolve most of my problem via the online help and FAQ’s. I have found the online help to be extremely detailed.

I have used MS Visio (various versions) before and have found that EA provides a far better documentation environment. It is definitely easier to keep diagrams ordered and filed away in EA than with Visio.

The setup was quite easy. The installation instructions and database setup is straight forward.

It was an easy install for our in-house team.

We never determined the ROI on the product but the documentation we have available at our fingertips is priceless.

Pricing is available on the website and very reasonable for a product of this nature. I have even acquired the product myself in a personal capacity at home for little side IT projects I do after hours.

What are you waiting for! If you do not use EA in any of your architecture, BA or design teams you are falling behind.

There are many of them. I like the graphical appearance of the elements. It is easy to group them and see the relations between them. The most valuable part is the code engineering, both for databases and source code. Using it, I can see the relationship between tables or classes.

I am the only user of EA as I am a system designer. I use it to make reports from it and what I give to the developers. I am sure that the process of the developing of our product is faster and more secure through using Sparx.

I think the project management part should be easier to use. I would like to give only people and times to an element, and I would like to see a simple list - name of the element, name of the resource and time and it would be fine to export the result into Excel.

For me the other problem is that the reports to HTML do not appear in the newest browsers.

I have used it for three months. I used one of the earlier version four years ago for half year.

I had no issues installing it.

I have had no issues with running it.

We have not scaled it as I am the only user in the company.

I've never needed to contact them

I have used Sybase Power Designer for database design, but I think Sparx is more comprehensive.

It was easy for me. The EA Example project was very useful. However, when I encountered a specific question it was difficult to find the right answer on the Sparx website.

I implemented it by myself.

• Teamwork support
• Price policy
• Support of many modelling languages
• Documentation generation incorporation

From the island of non managed analysis and design information to shared repositories with templates. It has helped us with real MDA and code generation directly into Visual Studio.

• A service over repository is more then needed. At least a read only service for JSON or SOAP endpoints
• To be able access models or element from custom apps or scripts on the server side
• The web interface which can show project tree with the model should be better

We've been using it for at least eight years, since v7.

We've had no deployment issues.

MS Office integration works only with local .eap repository files, not with our Postgres repository. Half a year ago they promised to fix this bug, but still no improvement.

We've had no issues scaling it to our needs.

It's sufficient.

It's sufficient.

Rational - no DB repository and it needed to be merged among the team members as XML files via external versioning system. Documentation, requirements, development all needed to be bought as separate tools which was too expensive. It crashes when a project (repo in files) is really big. There's no possibility to merge in real time and this can last hours, and often crashes.

It was straightforward.

We did it in-house.

It's sufficient, nothing to change with the pricing.

I've used it in six organisations over 10 years.

• Ability to use a single shared repository and defined languages, using both ArchiMate as the modelling language and the business language based on the repository contents. 
• It’s easy to deploy in a small workgroup.

• Ability to either offline with replication, documentation, HTML reporting
• The strength of the modelling and analysis tools. 

• Documentation generation needs significant improvement.
• More rigorous support of the ArchiMate rules would be a great improvement.