Avolution ABACUS vs Planview Portfolios comparison

Avolution and Planview are both solutions in the Enterprise Architecture Management category. Avolution is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.0, while Planview is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.5. Avolution holds a 3.7% mindshare in AM, compared to Planview’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Avolution users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Planview users who would recommend it.

Avolution ABACUS

Read 15 Avolution ABACUS reviews

2,024 Views
918 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Planview Portfolios

Read 63 Planview Portfolios reviews

353 Views
202 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Avolution ABACUS

Planview Portfolios

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Planview Portfolios and Avolution ABACUS are contenders in the project management and enterprise architecture categories, respectively. Planview Portfolios has an edge with its robust integration capabilities and strategic focus, although both products have unique strengths.

Features: Planview Portfolios includes robust capabilities for resource planning, strategy execution, and portfolio management, with seamless integration with tools like Power BI for flexible configuration and reporting. It boasts impressive project management and resource utilization bridging strategy and execution. In contrast, Avolution ABACUS offers a highly customizable meta-model and advanced modeling capabilities, making it ideal for complex reports and impact analysis. Its key strength lies in 3D modeling, providing significant flexibility in designing enterprise architectures.

Room for Improvement: Planview Portfolios needs refinements in user configuration, agile integration, and reporting speed, along with improvements to enhance workflow flexibility and customized modules. Users express difficulties with financial components and support responsiveness. Avolution ABACUS requires better integration, improved analytical reporting, and enhanced support for regional markets. It could also benefit from increased automation in data updates and better dashboards and simulation capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Planview Portfolios supports public, private, and on-premises deployments, offering flexibility and scalability suited to various organizational needs. The variability in customer service highlights issues with ticket resolution times and staff turnover, though technical support is generally positive. Avolution ABACUS focuses primarily on private and on-premises environments, providing consistent technical support, albeit with less emphasis on cloud deployments. Its customer service is often praised for responsiveness and expertise.

Pricing and ROI: Planview Portfolios is considered expensive, with licensing models like FLEX and enterprise licenses that offer cost efficiencies in larger deployments. Users perceive ROI through enhanced resource utilization and strategic portfolio management, despite difficulty quantifying exact figures. Avolution ABACUS presents competitive pricing, appealing to enterprises focused on detailed modeling without a vast user base. Its ROI is more qualitative, with gains in visibility and architecture planning, though less quantifiable than Planview's enterprise-level claims.

To learn more, read our detailed Avolution ABACUS vs. Planview Portfolios Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Avolution ABACUS vs. Planview Portfolios

April 2025

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Helped 849,686 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Avolution ABACUS

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

9th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Planview Portfolios

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

14th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Project Portfolio Management (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of Avolution ABACUS is 3.7%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Planview Portfolios is 1.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Architecture Management

Featured Reviews

JoseCamacho

Freelancer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Supports evaluating architecture through corporate objectives

I conducted an evaluation of enterprise architecture at the European Court in Luxembourg, reviewing and analyzing existing implementations to identify potential improvements and providing recommendations I conduct evaluations to identify potential improvements and make recommendations, forming a…

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Mark Hillman

Global Head of Portfolio Management at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees

User-friendly interface, but the reporting could be improved

The reporting is poor and requires improvement. The tiles and exception-based activities in the application are sufficient to get by. However, when it comes to producing executive reports, MI reports, or any other type of reporting, we must exit Planview and work offline. We have been working with them to improve on that, as well as using some of the Power BI capabilities that have been available for a while, but it's still more difficult than it should be. In the next release, I would like to be able to use the data in the tool to gain insight much more easily.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Avolution ABACUS allows for flexible enterprise architecture analysis."

"The tool's implementation is straightforward as everything is readily available. For instance, setting up a portal is seamless, allowing easy publishing and access to data. However, integrating with other tools like BI, Power BI, or Grafana requires setting up pipelines between them."

"The ease of modeling and the ease of showing interconnectivity and relationships is the most valuable. It is fairly simple and out of the box. It is customizable in many ways. It is a pretty good tool."

"Scalable and stable tool for roadmapping and modeling, with a good dashboard, end-to-end impact analysis, and portfolio management."

"The most valuable feature is the traceability, you can trace any object to the other."

"You can design using a diagram tool installed on your desktop, a key difference from other vendors."

"The product is easy to use and well-structured for the integrations we need it to make."

"It is a very stable solution...The initial setup of Avolution ABACUS is very easy."

More Avolution ABACUS pros

"The most valuable feature for me is the ease and customizability of reporting."

"We can view a project both at the top level and dig into the particularities. It's given us greater visibility into the work itself."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the completeness of the standard, underlying metamodel."

"Enterprise One provides a variety of types of resource assignments for assigning work to people. It's very easy and straightforward to configure these assignments. Planview allows us to see the entire workforce. We can see where our skill sets of people are, what they're working on, and allows us to make informed business decisions based on priority."

"It maps back to our SDLC process pretty well. I'm able to see the stage of where things are at. We also use Azure DevOps for all of our requirements and our coding."

"We have a fairly good picture of time tracking."

"The resource management and assignment features are valuable. The timesheet management is also valuable because that is a requirement for us. So, the ability to see timesheet forecasting and timesheet actual submission from resources has been very useful and valuable to us."

"We can easily see which functions are overcapacity. Before, we did not have visibility into that."

More Planview Portfolios pros

Cons

"It doesn't have the simulation capability, which would be helpful in doing some business process analysis and improvements."

"They should take more initiative to implement things that competing products have already come out with."

"It is vastly scalable but you can't run it on a Mac or Linux so it has limitations."

"While this is one of the most powerful tools on the market it does not integrate well with Microsoft Office or others."

"The company needs to update the UML version they are using for the product as it is quite old."

"The usability of the tool is an area with shortcomings that need improvement."

"If they want to expand in the European market then they are going to have to improve their technical support."

"The reporting could be easier to configure."

More Avolution ABACUS cons

"When it comes to reporting there are some challenges with integration."

"Some of the out-of-the-box reporting is not immediately useful and although it can be configured or customized, there are still improvements that can be made."

"It is a bit of a rigid system."

"The reporting is absolutely shocking. It's not good reporting and requires improvement."

"The number one thing that needs improvement is the UI. It should be easy for a casual project manager. It should provide customizable screens that can be a choice for project managers to choose as a professional level, medium level, and a very easy level."

"When I started working with Planview, I didn't know anything about project or resource management. I had to learn everything: the admin side, then the user side of it. Probably, in the beginning, I would implement in the blueprint or workshops more demos. A live demo of how the system works because we would like a little deeper dive in how the application works for us to understand what we need to provide, what we are doing, what we will be doing. Because in the beginning, it was so overwhelming, and we didn't know anything about the tool."

"Even though Enterprise One is easy and user-friendly, it could provide better training like a demo. Providing more tutorials or sessions would really help."

"The reporting capability and access to the fields for our system administrators to have access to the data without having to pay Enterprise One to get the data that's needed to create custom reports for management to create reports need improvement."

More Planview Portfolios cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"To get a fairly extensive license for Enterprise Architects from Spark is approximately US $400.00, maybe less, but with Avolution Abacus it was approximately US $2000.00 per year, and that includes maintenance with the Abacus tool."

"It is competitive. It is not chump change. I am just using the studio version. I am not using the full enterprise version, which would probably cost me three times more for single-use, but it gives a lot more capability and analysis. It is server-based as well, and it is reasonably priced compared to a lot of the other tools. There are other tools that have other sorts of capabilities, but in order to use them, you'd really have to have like 50 users for the price to become justifiable."

"The pricing is quite good compared to the competition and it is part of the reason we chose the product."

"This solution is expensive for some people's budgets and they need to offer a Lite version at a cheaper price"

"My company makes annual payments toward the licensing costs of the solution. Considering the product's capabilities, its prices are very reasonable."

"I'm paying on a yearly basis. I don't know whether it's a highly expensive tool or not. I'm getting a single version of it, and I don't have the enterprise part on it because I don't need the server component, and I don't need a web browser component. My estimate would be that it's a very reasonably priced tool given that you don't need to have licenses with everyone in order to get the information and the decision support capabilities out of the tool. You use the enterprise edition on top of the studio, which is the heart of the tool. I am not aware of any additional costs."

"There is a subscription for this solution. We are on an annual subscription because you sometimes receive special offers the longer you subscribe."

"The solution's pricing is not an issue."

More Avolution ABACUS pricing and cost advice

"Our licensing costs are probably $150,000 to $180,000 a year with 270 licenses total."

"The licensing part is a bit costly in comparison with the other available PPM tools."

"We are on the Flex licenses."

"Our licensing fees are approximately $50,000 USD annually."

"With the costs, they were very understanding. Knowing that we were an existing customer, they were very much willing to work with us to make sure that we were able to transition to Enterprise One from PPM Pro."

"The cost of other pieces and integrating them in needs improvement."

"Planview is a little pricey. From a licensing perspective, for just a simple timesheet user who does nothing in the system but reports time, the licensing is a little pricey, but you have to look at it from what it is that you get. We have 6,000 users, and I don't manage the system at all. I just have to do add them to the system. The servers, maintenance, OS levels, security patching for the OS, and all other things are not something that we maintain. So, you have to look at it from an operational perspective. It is not just the product itself. A holistic view has to be taken when you look at the product and how you're going to support it. I would have to hire an entire operation staff to bring it in-house, and at the end of the day, that might cost me more."

"I don't think we have necessarily purchased everything that I would have liked to have seen."

More Planview Portfolios pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Government

14%

Computer Software Company

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Avolution ABACUS?

The tool's implementation is straightforward as everything is readily available. For instance, setting up a portal is seamless, allowing easy publishing and access to data. However, integrating wit...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Avolution ABACUS?

It's pricey compared to Essential, Deltek, or Essential Cloud. However, its diagramming capabilities and metamodel design make it worth it. But it's not for large user bases. It has modules for app...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Avolution ABACUS?

While Avolution ABACUS is flexible, it can be complex to work with as it requires knowledge of specific configurations to customize the product. It would be beneficial to have seminars or other met...

See all answers

What do you like most about Planview Portfolios?

Planview Management integrates seamlessly with other tools and systems used within the organization, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, customer relationship management (CRM) syst...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Planview Portfolios?

Planview Portfolios is not too expensive. You get what you paid for.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Planview Portfolios?

Enhancements are needed in: Advanced reporting and analytics: While Planview Management provides robust reporting and analytics capabilities, further enhancements could include more advanced data v...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Avolution ABACUS

April 2025

Download Avolution ABACUS product report

Buyer's Guide

Planview Portfolios

April 2025

Download Planview Portfolios product report

Also Known As

No data available

Planview Enterprise One, Troux

Overview

ABACUS is the enterprise architecture tool designed to have the quickest time-to-value. You can use it to build and maintain rich visual models from existing company data. ABACUS comes with standard industry frameworks as well as advanced analytic tools and best-in-class roadmapping and reporting functionality.

With Avolution ABACUS You Can:

Strategize and analyze your organizational architecture with ease using data-driven diagrams
Enjoy connected data, models, and metrics across your whole enterprise
Work directly and securely in your browser, which is ideal for global teams and remote working

Avolution ABACUS Features:

Modeling and roadmapping: ABACUS offers a fully provisioned modeling environment for enterprise and IT architecture, strategic planning, and digital business management.
Digital collaboration: Avolution ABACUS includes a feature that allows you to set up dashboards so you can tell data stories using business-friendly visualizations.
Portfolio management: Anyone can update their own data, which, in turn, reduces the workload of the enterprise architecture team.
Data-driven architecture: ABACUS’s data-driven architecture gives you the opportunity to design and automate key calculations using out-of-the-box or simple no-code algorithms.
Collaborative data management: Using this feature, you can save time with single sign-on (SSO) and AD Integrations; You can embed directly in MS Teams, Confluence, or other workplace social software.
Dynamic data visualizations: ABACUS’s graph view allows you to navigate through systems in a dynamic environment, as opposed to static diagram views.

Avolution ABACUS Benefits:

Time efficient: Models and roadmaps automatically stay up-to-date, saving your organization a lot of time so you can focus on other priorities instead.
Centralized location: With Avolution ABACUS, you can connect all data in one place, keeping everything both consistent and accurate.
Full flexibility: ABACUS gives you full flexibility to adapt and configure your own metamodels with ease.
Complete visibility: Your whole enterprise can have visibility of the architecture through the use of digital collaboration and visually clear dashboards.
Machine learning: With Avolution ABACUS, you can employ machine learning to speed data management and analysis.
Spot dependencies: ABACUS helps your organization spot dependencies and impacts that might trip up your projects.
Fully customizable: Avolution ABACUS is fully customizable; Select, configure, or adapt your repository and metamodel. You can also automate metrics and analytics specific to your business.

Reviews from Real Users:

Andre W., Enterprise Architect at Enterprise Architecture Perspectives, says, "The most valuable feature is that it has a customizable meta-model, which is key.”

The Lead Enterprise Domain Architects at a financial services firm feels that "The product is easy to use and well-structured for the integrations we need it to make.”

"There are plenty of features available, such as the ability to test applications for issues and a user-friendly dashboard,” says Suresh T., Enterprise Digital Solution Architect at a tech services company.

Avolution

Planview Portfolios offers a comprehensive platform for managing IT, project and resource management, along with strategic planning. The tool focuses on optimizing resource allocation and financial analysis, supporting global operations.

Organizations use Planview Portfolios to streamline project tracking from inception to completion, enhancing strategic alignment with corporate objectives. The tool integrates with platforms like JIRA to provide seamless workflows and supports critical business processes, including budgeting and capacity planning. Teams benefit from customized configurations and robust reporting, further supporting effective decision-making. Despite its strengths, improvements are sought in navigation, documentation, and integration capabilities.

What are the key features?

Customizable interface: Allows personalization to meet specific needs.
Comprehensive resource and financial management: Enables detailed tracking and analysis.
Robust reporting: Provides extensive data insights.
Integration with Power BI: Enhances data access for stakeholders.
Resource and capacity planning: Optimizes workforce allocation.

What benefits should users expect?

Improved strategic alignment: Supports better decision-making.
Increased operational efficiency: Streamlines project management.
Enhanced resource optimization: Ensures optimal use of workforce.
Better financial insights: Allows precise budget tracking.

In industries like IT and project management, Planview Portfolios supports complex portfolio handling, ensuring visibility across global operations. Companies in these sectors leverage its strategic planning tools for strategic alignment and resource management, integrating with existing systems for improved process efficiency.

Planview

Sample Customers

Barclays

UPS, NatWest, Ingram Micro, Canadian Tire, Viessmann, Volvo, NASCO, UNESCO

Buyer's Guide

Avolution ABACUS vs. Planview Portfolios

April 2025

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