What is our primary use case?
Mostly, we are using the solution around the IT department. We use it for functional analysis. That said, I have also tried for two years to use it more in business cases.
What is most valuable?
The variety of diagrams available is excellent.
You are able to combine different diagrams together and to use a UML component in a different diagram, for example. It's quite flexible.
The initial setup was pretty easy.
The solution is scalable.
We have found the stability to be very reliable.
The solution is affordable.
What needs improvement?
The user interface is not so good. It's not easy for someone to use it at first. The product takes some getting used to.
In the next update, I would like to see more integration with databases in the cloud. For example, Amazon. I'd like that mostly to plug the Sparx tool above any Azure database or Amazon database in the cloud.
You do need to set up something separate in order to broadcast or share information. That's not so easy to do with the product itself.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution for 14 years at this point. It's been well over a decade.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
While we have had performance issues in the past, it was mostly due to the database we had chosen a few years ago. We've since moved over to another one and now it's really good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have 25 people in our company that directly deal with this product.
The solution is very easy to scale. It's no problem at all. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so.
How are customer service and support?
I used technical support maybe two years ago for the first time. Mostly, I look online and all around for discussion articles. I have to say that Sparx has a lot of documentation and articles and user groups that users can just dig into and find information. I just asked a question a few years ago about a possible feature that I wanted to see in the next version. It wasn't really for troubleshooting.
How was the initial setup?
The first setup was 14 years ago, and therefore it has been a long time. However, it is very easy and not overly difficult.
The maintenance involved is all about the database. We moved from an old database to a newer one. However, that's it. There is no maintenance, events, or tasks to schedule regularly.
What about the implementation team?
We did not need a vendor to assist us. We did not use a consultant or integrator. We implemented the solution ourselves and we were able to configure it in-house as well.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I'm just a customer and an end-user.
The pricing is reasonable. It's not overly expensive. The price to quality ratio is very good.
Extra costs are mostly related to the training part. The tool is not very user-friendly. Most of my time is around training new users around UML and organizing the information. There are too many ways to use the tool and to organize, and a couple of guidelines are very essential to keep the value up. Training is very important and useful.
I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.
What other advice do I have?
I'm currently using the latest version of the solution at this time. I can't speak to the exact version number, however.
I would definitively recommend the solution to any IT department as it's very cheap and very powerful. However, it is not very user-friendly. It's a modeling tool, and modeling is not very popular typically. That said, you can scale it to fit the requisite departments.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.