What advice do you have for others considering Avolution ABACUS?

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten because it is quite expensive. If we don't maintain it with the help of an administrator, the metamodel can become complex and not deliver the results we expect. It's essential to maintain it with the vendor's help so the metamodel can be customized to our dynamic software and IT ecosystem. It's important to have a trained administrator to maintain it.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten. I would recommend using it to others. However, they need to improve their technical support. It's taking them too long to respond to issues. I faced 14-15 days of delays to get a reply about an installation error. When I heard back, I had already moved on to working with a previous version and had to backtrack. They need to align what they promise with their delivery and have a better presence in the Middle East region.

I would ask those planning to use the tool to read the documentation part, which is very good overall. There is a repository for scripts, and users can exchange the scripts for customization, which is actually very good. I rate Avolution ABACUS an eight out of ten.

As a semi-retired consultant in the industry, when I think of solutions that I've experienced: database management solutions and similar solutions I've developed in Oracle, and COTS, a few that I have experienced, they're vague now. I haven't been in that part of the industry for a while. I've been focusing on enterprise architecture, and one of the products that provide enterprise architecture which I have experience with is ABACUS. I'm still getting familiar with this solution and all that it has available within it. In terms of utilizing this product, I had two months to utilize it. I used it for a month and I haven't been back to it, because from a software perspective, I've been focused on enterprise architecture as a discipline without the use of a software tool. I've been more focused on the actual discipline of enterprise architecture, from a techniques point of view, rather than a tools point of view, as it's applied to understanding an organization. The tool only helps to graphically capture information, but I haven't been focused on the tool side from a software point of view for the latter half of 2021. I've been focused on the body of knowledge of enterprise architecture. I've been reading worldwide and studying from various mentors of this particular discipline. Right now, software is not the practiced area, even though I thought the ABACUS product was great, and you have TOGAF as well. Those are the two heavy hitters in the industry for me. I thought that ABACUS had a lot to offer, so I chose to spend time on it, and I was looking at it from a software point of view, delivering enterprise architecture. I chose ABACUS initially. At some time though, I may double back and take a look at the TOGAF and the ADM part of what they do with ABACUS, but I'm not yet certain if that's going to be in 2022. I may definitely break it up by half a year, and take some time to actually look at TOGAF from a tools point of view within 2022. I never really got around to acquiring the product and using it from a licensing point of view. I was evaluating the product as it related to the discipline of utilizing and supporting enterprise architecture. That was my initial interest. I never got around to actually acquiring it, procuring it, and putting it into what I call, functional use for any organization. I was a consultant trying to stay on the curve of understanding what's available to the world of enterprise architecture. The discipline and the acquisition of a tool for an organization, I never really got into that, although I used the knowledge and passed that on to organizations as I'm practicing as a consultant. No one chose to implement an enterprise architecture tool for the entire organization. They liked the principles, the concepts, some of the road mapping that helped them out from a strategic point of view, but they never went for implementing enterprise architecture to the entire enterprise. My advice to others thinking about implementing ABACUS is that it all depends as each practitioner will gravitate to whatever features they find best suited for the application, for the business, or for the enterprise. I don't have any hard and fixed advice for implementation, because I never really got to implement it. I saw some features that I liked, and I utilized those features to further my understanding and further my client's understanding for what they were looking for at the time, which was basically how to align things from an as-is perspective to where they think they were going, which came up with roadmaps. That's what I did as a person contracted to do, or to help strategic management understand where they're going based on where they are. I'm rating this tool an eight out of ten. It's definitely high on my purview of tools within the enterprise architecture scheme of things, because it's more than just that. It's a communications tool as well: meaning that you can work almost like Microsoft Team. This platform offers more than just the ability to draw diagrams across a multiple set of object management group, the BPM, etc. All those drawings that we have out there in the industry that we utilize across business and science: It has those things in it. Not only does it have that, but it has a work approach as well, similar to a Microsoft Team. You can function like a Microsoft Team so you could be corresponding and have members of your team looking at your objects, and saying: "This is what I'm trying to do." Another example is if you implemented an enterprise architecture approach electronically across an organization, and you are now in the real world of putting data into catalogs, and trying to look at it from an as-is point of view to potentially what you're going to work towards in the next five years, then it could function as a simulator, e.g. you could simulate what you're trying to work towards. ABACUS is a really forward thinking product with a lot of nice features in it. It's not just all talk. It actually works.

I would recommend it very strongly. It is one of the best tools out there. At this time, I would rate it a 10 out of 10. I don't rate tens very often, but I believe it is one of the best tools out there.

This solution is the leader in enterprise architecture, I would recommend it to others. I rate Avolution ABACUS a six out of ten.

It is a great tool. It provides a lot of flexibility in meeting a client stage. It is an excellent early development tool. If you have an immature EA practice and you're looking for a tool to help you understand what is it that you really want to develop, it is a great tool for helping you in doing that. You can then carry on further, or you could switch to another tool if you really want to. Among the features that are coming out there, one of the key ones is automatic updates, where models can automatically update catalogs, like when you draw an object into a model, it'll put it into a catalog or a spreadsheet of stuff so that you can do it automatically. You don't have to go back and update your catalog. I would give it an eight out of ten. I don't think there are many solutions that would even come close to a nine. Certainly, there are no tens out there.

I really recommend this product to people who are considering it. For what it does it is very good and a reasonable price. On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Avolution ABACUS as an eight-out-of-ten.

Working with enterprise architecture, I set up the practice and evaluate the client's practices to see where they can leverage more consistent procedures and help with their program development. Most of my experience in IT solutions is on the documentation of solutions through EA tools as opposed to getting into the details of the actual solutions and the internal workings of them. From a recent email, Avolution has released a change being made in the latest version and they are explaining what changes need to be done. People who are on servers hosted by Avolution, need to log off by a certain time. You can host a solution either within your enterprise or they can host it for you. A tool is only as useful as the people using it, so you want to have the training program associated with anything to get people aware of what models to use or what type of templates, viewpoints, or standards that need to be associated and then they can work with that. What you don't want is to have them going in and start changing things, as that would have catastrophic impacts. Understand how you want to analyze your enterprise information and how you want to leverage that to make better decisions, and that will tell you what features of any tool you need to be considered as fundamental. For example, if you are going to allow people to put information into a tool with no standardized approach, no rigorous rules, and no procedure on how to do things, then any tool will do because you are not going to get anything out of it. It's going to be garbage in and nothing out. Many organizations will go and buy a tool thinking that it will solve their problem but the tools won't solve the problem unless they understand how they want to leverage it to make better decisions. You have to keep with it because this solution has so many options and features. I keep learning and I just have to review the tutorials if I have forgotten how to do something. It's not a one-person tool, it's multifaceted. It's role-based and just trying to go through and trying to do everything is a bit overwhelming. One person can manage it but that also gives you the wrong impression too. You must understand how you want people or organizations to see how to leverage the tool and then assign building the catalogs of a process reference model or a technical reference model. You need to assign that to people to do, you are not going to do it all yourself. In populating information about the projects, you have to delegate that to the project management office to make sure that they give you the information that you need. At this time, I have a client who's the federal government here and project managers don't like to be questioned or have to put more into a tool. it's a very powerful tool. It does what an enterprise architect needs it to do and it supports the business in knowing more about the business so that they can do better. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I am not an implementer or a service provider, I offer consultation and provide solutions in enterprise markets. Part of my job is to recommend and select the tools that are suitable for my clients and stay within their budget. There are times where the open-source tool is the most suitable, whereas at other times I can offer a more complex solution. I would recommend this solution because it has some powerful aspects, but it won't fit everyone's budget. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

My advice to anybody who is researching this solution is to consider both the technical support and stability, as well as the technical aspects of the product. Based on my experience, this is not a product that I recommend at the moment. When the vender launches a new version they should guarantee the core things are really working so that they do not have problems like this. They need to focus on what is critical and important in order to last in the market. The integration with other tools should be more open and clear, as it seems to be quite closed and proprietary. The market does not like this kind of thing. If the customers are not trusting enough then they are not going to buy the product. This is a very powerful product and it is very customizable, and the concept of the product is good, but they need to improve a lot, including the user interface. We also had some crashes when we were using this solution. This product may be easy for the IT team to use, but it is not designed for them. It is designed for business users. This is why the user interface has to be more user-friendly than it is. In terms of it being a powerful tool, I would rate it a ten out of ten. However, the user interface is very poor, which I would rate a one or two out of ten. Overall, I would rate this solution a five out of ten.

I would definitely recommend it but it depends on the use case. If you want a data model of flexibility and catalog scalability I would recommend it from that perspective. For an architecture practice, there's more detailed architecture than enterprise architecture so for that, I wouldn't recommend Abacus. It's just for different use cases that Abacus is good to have. I would rate it an eight out of ten.