erwin Evolve by Quest Valuable Features

ScottLawson - PeerSpot reviewer
Director IT Architecture at QAD

One of the most valuable features is the website that sits on top of the database. There's a database of objects and how they are related, and you can make views and diagrams and visual elements out of that information on the website. The website is the part that is called Evolve and we use the Evolve Designer and publish the website out to our employees. They can click around and navigate and search, etc.

Evolve enables people to look at the processes in multiple ways. Unlike a documentation repository of processes, where nano-processes are written up in a textual form, this allows people to make use of the processes in ways that they hadn't been able to before. They can go to the tool and say, "For this process, what is the application that helps us run it?" Or they can ask the question in the opposite way, and say, "For this application, what processes are involved? Or what processes does this application help us do?" Then they can see all the various processes that are related to a particular application, or a particular department, or location, or project, etc.

We use the client/server version because it's more powerful. That's what we started with as the web-only version was not robust enough for us. They keep telling us that they're going to rid of the client and make it totally on the web, but I haven't seen that happen yet. I have a group of architects who do this kind of work and they're very accomplished and intelligent. We've learned how to use the more complicated client/server version. It suits us because there's more power to it and we know it. We don't need an easy-to-use, dumbed-down version because it's not that hard, and because we've used it for a long time. We have a stable group, people who have been here for the whole time that we've had it. The client/server version is perfectly fine, because it has the web module that sits on top and publishes the information. If it didn't have that, that would be terrible, but for years now it has had the Evolve piece on top of it. That lets the whole organization browse through the information quite easily.

Another tool that we use in the erwin suite is called Collector and it allows us to integrate our enterprise architecture repository with other repositories of information. For example, we have all of our employees' information in a cloud system called Workday, but we need to have employees' information in erwin so that we can relate employees to processes and employees to applications, for responsibility purposes. Every 24 hours, we use the Collector tool to synch all of the employee information into erwin, which is already then related to these other pieces. We don't have to maintain that information in erwin because it's maintained elsewhere. We do that not only with our employees, but with a bunch of process documents as well as with projects and equipment. So Collector really is an important tool in the suite, if you're going to manage a lot of objects. We have 15,000 objects in our database.

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it_user1276623 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Enterprise Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

For me, the most valuable features are the system analytics and system capabilities, the modeling, and being able to diagram-out system interfaces.

And in equal measure, on the process side, the workflow side gives us the ability to configure a group of workflow models and drill down into supporting documentation. And on that side of the business, they also use erwin Evolve a lot, the web deployment publishing capability. They're very heavily dependent on that. I like that as well, but I'm not nearly as dependent on it. Our audience just doesn't consume the output in that way very much. But I think it's a fantastic way to publish what you do in the tool.

Its flexibility and scalability to support all stakeholders in making informed decisions are powerful capabilities. I can send images in the PDF form, along with the relationships and the associations that are a very important part of what we do. It can show what is affected and what is impacted by a certain change in one area of the system architecture or enterprise architecture. I can very quickly draw those issues and topics to the fore.

Our client likes to see things on PowerPoint slides, so we often have to publish things out to an image, and put that in a PowerPoint. erwin EA has that functionality.

I've tried to socialize and evangelize the Evolve web deployment, so that our client would understand how easily they could interface with it. But given the defense-related and government-related environment that we're in, that isn't always something that they take advantage of.

Also, the fact that admin tasks are performed by desktop applications has been done fairly well in the solution. I'm able to turn people on and off within it. We've had people come and go from our environment. I'm able to configure them, set them up, get them using it, and get them on their feet fairly easily.

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MG
Senior Business Process Management Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The feature that stands out for me is the ease of configuring objects and the screens to show them. It's really easy to add a new type of object in this reference. Creating a new type of object, using it, and evolving it a little bit in terms of what we can document about it are the main features that made us decide to use this provider. We started with a few objects regarding our architecture and now we have a lot of them but, we have grown up with the solution.

The other feature that helps us, now that we have documented all of these objects, is that we are able to exploit the data we have put inside with operational reports. The reports are easy to create.

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March 2024
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DF
Global Enterprise Architect and Catalogue of Business Solutions Manager at a recruiting/HR firm with 10,001+ employees

The most valuable feature for us is the visibility to open and enable notifications to the web interface for users that we want to prevent. Therefore, we are able to maintain their data as they are spread out across the world, and it's consolidated into one singular repository. This is necessary to enable people who are not in the same location to access IP data in a very simple way using the web interface. The second reason it is quite useful - anybody in the company can consult and access the data.

It is quite user-friendly.

We are also using erwin DT for integration to a wider ecosystem. It's a way to be able link erwin with the CMDB, which is technology with a layer to a server, etc. So, we automate and link with the assets or technical components of each server to solutions.

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DR
Enterprise Architect at a aerospace/defense firm with 10,001+ employees

There are two valuable features. One is the ease of use with configuration management control. From what I understand, there are other solutions out there and they can be really problematic. It's just seamless with the Casewise tool.

The other feature is the Evolve product. I have not seen capabilities for web-sharing and interaction with the architecture from any other supplier. It's a great capability and I've been promoting that for a number of years. Currently, my colleagues don't yet use Evolve to experiment and suggest changes that can be published back into our live model. That's a cultural thing that we're trying to get people used to. We want them to move away from PowerPoint and Visio and work in the model. That's a great feature that will provide a lot of benefits. But it's a cultural problem that we're trying to overcome.

The collaborative web modeling capability has helped somewhat with the speed and quality of designs, but because of that cultural barrier, again, it hasn't reached its full potential. I've used it a lot to show things to executives and to provide a link to them so they can review the models. People see the value, but what I'm not getting, at the developer/peer-reviewer level, is people to really collaborate. But for sharing information with project managers and executives, we've had some successes there.

erwin EA provides superior, exemplar capabilities to scale across all stakeholders. The product is incredibly flexible. It comes with tons of capabilities, but you can also customize the tool if you need to. 

The fact that admin tasks are performed through a desktop application means it's very easy to use. That works quite well. It's very easy to administer.

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Jose Mejia - PeerSpot reviewer
ETL Developer at INGENIERIA 21 SAS

erwin Evolve by Quest has good options for generating the code. We can efficiently deploy business models into the databases and generate SQL scripts.

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JM
IT Director at a construction company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I really like the way it's not just independent content. There is a model behind it. It's really nice that the Evolve front-end, as it builds a website, keeps those relationships in mind. You can even go to a procedure and see all the applications that are related to it. Then you can go into that application and see all the standard operating procedures that that application is a part of. It's just very connected. I really like that it provides an object-relationship view of your organization.

Our workforce uses tablets and mobile phones while in the field.  Evolve's responsive web design allows access to the information in an intuitive manner across all devices.

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it_user570936 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Governance, Sr. Mgr at Lytx Inc.
  1. Reverse Engineering and Complete Compare – to document database design and test for changes over time across many different platforms (including Big Data platforms and cloud like SQL Azure)
  2. Workgroup Repository collection of data models allows research across models without worry about platform incompatibilities and provides easy KPIs about corporate data assets
  3. User Defined Properties – Command line links: allows flexibility to link different aspects of the data model to other tools to build better communication tools
  4. Model templates (that are able to stay linked with the model) with filterable update capabilities
  5. Ability to add images to the model – to help make them communicate better
  6. ERwin Portal Links – allows easy 'Find' for information pages about the published ERwin Data Model
  7. ERwin Portal scheduled model harvest – allows for a ‘hands-off’ maintenance capability for Administrator.
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Asish Sahu - PeerSpot reviewer
SPM at Infosys

Evolve's reverse engineering ability is quite useful.

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it_user570531 - PeerSpot reviewer
President & CEO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

- Excellent graphical support for very large data models, enabling our team to plot detailed and colorful data models containing hundreds of entities and as large as 3 feet by up to 40 feet in length. Despite building and maintaining many very large data models, we do not have problems with the stability of the graphical representation or layout, something we still encounter with a surprising number of other data modeling tools (when we're asked to try to port our data models to other tools by a few of our customers who are already using other tools when we start working with them).

- Robust dictionary and model comparison capability ("Complete compare") allow for sophisticated model management and configuration options.

- Optional repository-based Model Manager allows for coordination and version control across multiple (possibly geographically distributed) stakeholders.

- Longstanding commitment to open metadata access, either through included pre-builtimport/export connectors (for most common metadata-aware modeling tools, ETL tools, XML, etc.) or through sophisticated API (for programmatic access). This has been very important to our large customers and our team over the years as it has enabled metadata movement and synchronization between tools as and when required.

- Erwin can reverse and forward engineer from/to most supported versions of most widely used RDBMS, making deployment straightforward in most cases.

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PR
Independent Consultant at a tech consulting company with 1-10 employees

I really liked that it mapped out processes and was able to attach the data model to the appropriate process. You could map out the process, then when you got down to a specific couple of data elements, you could attach the table in the database that supported that process. You could connect it with erwin Data Modeler for that.

The integration capability with erwin Data Modeler was easy and great.

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SS
Works at AIT Resource Group

Forward and reverse engineering.

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RC
Chief Consultant at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees

It's a customizable tool that allows you to do a lot of architectural modeling for customers. You can use different kinds of diagrams to represent the architecture setting.

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FR
Director of the Division Consulting Business Process and Director of Enterprise Architecture at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Evolve is like a tank. You can do whatever you want with the solution, but you need to customize it. I think that it's not very aligned with the framework for enterprise architecture. MEGA is focused on these enterprise architectures, but it's only for that. With Evolve, you can do everything you want with professional services.

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it_user918228 - PeerSpot reviewer
Architecture Portfolio Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

The ability to share and collaborate on the solution is its most valuable feature.

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it_user552810 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data Architect at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Complete Compare AND Bulk Edit.

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SD
Solution Lead at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
  • Overall model usability
  • Model formatting and layout
  • Logical model creation
  • Physical model creation
  • Forward-engineering/DDL creation
  • Standards creation and reuse
  • Model and database comparison tools
  • Metadata interchange with other tools
  • Support for a broad range of data sources from relational to big data to the Cloud.
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RC
Chief Consultant at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees

The most valuable features for us are impact analysis, where I can easily visualize the impact of change.

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Buyer's Guide
Enterprise Architecture Management
March 2024
Find out what your peers are saying about erwin by Quest , IDERA, SAP and others in Enterprise Architecture Management. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.