MEGA HOPEX Reviews

We use the product for application portfolio management. We capture a list of applications and draw architecture diagrams. 

We use the portfolio management feature heavily. 

The tool's UI should be more user-friendly. 

I have been working with the product for two years. 

The solution is stable. 

We have ten users for the product. 

We don't have direct tech support. We avail support through a system integrator. 

Neutral

We had faced some issues with the tool's setup and it took a few days to configure and deploy. 

I would rate the product a seven out of ten. You need to explore other options before selecting this product. 

The modules that we use are MEGA Process and MEGA Architecture.

This is a complete package with all of the functionality that we need.

The user interface for the version that we are using is not modern.

This is a complex product. For me, all of the functionality in this product exists, but it is not well explained. Better documentation and training would be helpful.

It was very difficult to adapt MEGA to our way of working. You have to spend 40% of the time thinking about how you will implement and use the MEGA concept.

I have been working with MEGA HOPEX for 10 years.

We have had some issues with stability but they are related to Citrix, and not due to MEGA.

I have not been in contact with technical support.

My company also uses Planview, but not the part that is dealing with architecture.

We have an internal support team and when we have a problem, we contact them.

My advice to anybody who is considering MEGA HOPEX is that it's a complete solution. All of the functionality is implemented. However, it is a complex product. Somebody who wants to use it should understand all of the functionality, but select only 20% of the concepts and use them very well. It's not necessary to use the full functionality and we spent too much time on the gain we received.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

What I find the most valuable is the process workflow. It is really good. 

The fact that you can decompose is also valuable, as is the file D structure. Also, the fact that you can have your own logical repository structure and you can drag and drop is very valuable. This is largely because of its intuitiveness. 

Once you understand the logic behind the tool, MEGA HOPEX is quite intuitive. I also like the ability to create custom reports. I like the fact that you can share repository content via web to other end users who are not architects.

Of course, there is always room for improvement. There should be an integration with the Microsoft Office platform, for instance. I can compare it to a tool like Orbus. In Orbus, there is already an integration with Microsoft. So, if I already have network diagrams already built in a Microsoft solution, I can bring it into Orbus. I can actually pull a number of the building blocks. I can map parts of the diagrams into the inventory. That is a very, very good feature. 

MEGA HOPEX could also definitely have a lower price. 

I used MEGA HOPEX for about three to four years.

MEGA HOPEX's technical support is fantastic. If it's paid for, it's fantastic. They have very knowledgeable engineers and support practitioners, especially considering that the tool has been around for quite some time. 

MEGA HOPEX also has extensive documentation. So quite a number of issues can be resolved just by looking through the documentation. For more complex things, you probably will need their support. They also provide support for metamodel customizations and that is equally good as well. 

The initial setup is very easy, but it depends on type of deployment you want to do, whether it is standalone or otherwise. They have a file place database structure that they use and integrations for Oracle and Microsoft SQL servers. 

The deployment guides are very good. You can just pick up any of the deployment guides. Once you have the license, just follow through and run the installation. The installation on both platforms is quite straightforward.

The price of MEGA HOPEX is too high. MEGA HOPEX's problem is that it is expensive, but it's a fantastic tool.

My advice is that if you have the budget for it, MEGA HOPEX is a fantastic tool. It will especially help you if you are heavily focused on process architecture. MEGA HOPEX maps your org structure and you can use that to build in your processes and then just directly house your processes into the org structure. This is just a fantastic workflow in terms of the engineering and the thinking behind its structure. The pricing is an issue, however. MEGA HOPEX could be more affordable. They could also create some form of community-based addition to allow a wider audience access and play around with the tool. I think this would be a welcome development.

Traceability across architecture domains - business architecture and data technology. All of them can connect the dots, and get an end-to-end view of the architecture landscape. That is one of the powerful strengths of the tool. The second strength is the ability to query and mine for information. There is also a valuable portion of the tool, where you can query, navigate through, break down, and find more information. These are at least three things that stand out.

With the amount of information that we can store, and the meta-model that is out there, we invest a lot of time in building the meta-model. Right now, it is vendor-specific. We moved away from industry standard. It makes it that much more harder for us to take this data and put it in some other tool. We've got a lot of investment in the meta-data that's out there.

Architecture modeling - since it's repository-based, it's a lot easier for people to query, create their diagrams, and check for modeling rules. That's another good feature that is available. It's easy for us to enforce standards. That's also a powerful feature which we are leveraging.

The process side love the tool. It helps them to build their current operating model and also to get to the target operating model. That has been helpful and successful. We're still struggling with challenges on the application and technology / data architecture side. That is one area where we would say there is room for improvement. Data architects certainly don't see the tool being their first choice

In terms of features that are available, data architecture, pretty much like the big data and other unstructured content coming in, or for that matter Cloud. Cloud has been around for some time. Definitely if the tool provides more out-of-the-box features, they'll be helpful. My team is responsible for promoting this tool within the enterprise, so we're actually acting as a vendor for our own consumers. We don't control the features of the product, therefore we have to rely on the vendor to provide all these features. All we can do is provide guidance. One thing certainly would help, if the industry is already going towards Cloud computing and big data, why is the product lagging behind in terms of those features? We lose out on time to market.

Let's say I want to create a visualization or I want to bring my own portal page. I have to rely on the vendor to do that. That takes away my time to market. I have all these parts that I want to present, but if it is more than 3 or 4 clicks, that's it, I lose the audience right away. If there is a way for us to accelerate and create a user profile-based user interface, like each role would have its own template. They only get to see the relevant details, and I don't have to rely on the vendor to configure and make that available to my customers. That would definitely help me.

We started off with the web interface and ran into that performance, stability-related issues, so we were directed towards Windows. We made the switch, but certainly in terms of session management or in terms of user transaction management and stability itself, like having a consistent experience, there is a desire or appetite for improvement.

Performance is not consistent, it could be a lot of factors. The user experience is some days better than others. We've been partnering with the vendor to find out, to get to the lower-level details as to what's going on and how they can improve the platform features. Certainly the presentation aspects, the usability of the tool does require people to be savvy with the product before they can derive the value. That's why in my experience I've seen a lot of the senior guys (I'm not talking about executives) such as portfolio architects, don't want to log into the tool. They think it's too hard for them to navigate. Personally, I don't find it hard. I find the tool very helpful, but I'm having difficulty selling that to my peers and to my superiors in my company.

When I joined they had rolled out MEGA 2009 (the previous version). In 2011 I started off with adoption. My primary role was to ensure that the tool was adopted. We recently upgraded to HOPEX, so pretty much we had to start all over again.

We are kind of right now looking into the other vendors. It's going to be a tough choice for us, considering that half of our user community like the tool and they've gotten used to it. For us to bring on a different tool would be a little more challenging. It's not like the other tools right now are standing up. Each tool has its strengths, but when we look at it overall, we are still going to struggle with any tool that we pick.

Rating: 5-7 (out of 10). Primarily because of time to market. For instance, before we moved to HOPEX, reporting was meant to be a big thing. They said, "Hey, HOPEX is going to solve most of your reporting problems." We moved to HOPEX, we are still not there yet in terms of what our customers want. In terms of innovation and time to market, we would see a lot of improvement. The core competency from the product is great. Just marketing it and getting it in the hands of the people that will be using the tool, is still a struggle, at least in my enterprise.

Other advice to users: get a handle on the common features of the tool. Most people don't do that, so they essentially struggle if they don't go through that training process. I wish there were videos available from the vendor which we could use to bring people quickly onto the toolset. I would like to have them look at YouTube videos and say "In 15 minutes, you know how to get in, how to navigate and understand." That is something that is lacking, so for me, to give the tool to someone, there is a little bit of hesitation right away, because it puts more burden on me to train them, or my colleagues to train them.

HOPEX has different modules. The one we use the most is the IT infrastructure module for process management. One guy on my team is in charge of this component, whereas I am the solution architect. I think there are at least three or four modules.

If a client wants to integrate an app with the HOPEX console, they need to pay MEGA for that service, and it's expensive. We offer that integration to clients as a service because we know how to integrate and reassess the cost.

HOPEX has a panel that offers various views. I think that is very good. MEGA has an app for integrating with a lot of apps. We help our clients integrate HOPEX with a different product like Apple Gateway, for example. I've been with the company for 15 years, and we connect with everything. Our clientele includes almost all of the banks in Mexico.

We have a very close relationship with MEGA representatives in Mexico, and we ask them why they don't offer impact analysis. For example, we have a server in the center and provide the client a view of what's in the peripheral area, like one cluster, application, process area, and services. We want to offer our clients that level of visibility with HOPEX.

I've been using HOPEX for around four years. The first tool that we acquired was Casewise around six or seven years ago. We started using MEGA four years ago. My company is a global bank that operates in Spain, Mexico, and the United States. 

I rate MEGA HOPEX eight out of 10. 

The most valuable feature of the tool is its ability to provide line of sight from Buinsess Outcome (Service to be delivered) down to how the resources are configured and connected to make it happen. Understanding how the Business and technology align to provide the organizational ability to deliver the niche that it plays in in our environment.

It does this by allowing us to capture the business process, business elements, and the technology elements and create relationships between them.

The ability to create diagrams and documents that tell the right story is a key feature. With this product we are able to produce reports that take architecturally modeled information and produce System Design Guides that are foundational for our organization to certify and accredit our Investments. The ability of the report to "walk the architecture" and pull out relevant ports, protocol, and Service information related to which client applications are talking to which servers helps validate what firewall ports need to be opened, etc.

It started improving visibility and provided us a better picture of technology dependencies. It has allowed us to better document what the business needs and more cleanly identify the technologies that are going to be needed to support the business needs. It has allowed us to have a cleaner picture of how technology is expected to help the business and reduce redundant technology provided functionality accross the organization.

Stability is definitely a critical thing.

Organizations can not afford to have to be rebooting production systems to add a user or to reset a users session. It needs to be more self-healing.

The intuitiveness of the interface.

The ability for the tool to guide a user through a process to ensure architectural changes are made based on knowledge of modeling and business rules, especially where they are complex is very critical to ensuring an manageable architecture. This is especially true when an organization does not have individuals with a deep knowledge of the tool.

We have used this product both pre-web version and the beta versions of Hopex.

Stability has gotten much better.

We have used Hopex since it was beta. V1R1 was very unstable, it required multiple reboots a day. These were reboots of the applications and did not normally require a server reboot. With V1R2 Hopex became much more stable. V1R3 for the most part has been stable platform.

Because of our architectureal needs we tend to be more on the bleeding edge of their product than a lot of others are willing to be. This means we have identified more issues with Hopex than some of the other customers. The Department of Defense (DOD) in general, tends to have tighter security and configuration requirements. This means that we have pushed Mega to have to readdress some security design issues that other customers may not have found to be a concern.

In many cases Mega has been fairly responsive to addresses product defects. Not all of them have happened in what I would consider a timely manner. Unfortunately, some things that were identified were not be released until two or three versions down. If there is a functional issue that really is a pain point, a broken feature, and you hear that it is not going to get it fixed for four months, this really creates a business issue. They have sped it up in some cases. Some of the issues are due to the time difference as the corporate offices are in france which means they historically have not always got the responses back in as timely a manner as I think should be applicable.

In the current version, we still have to clean up processes on a weekly basis. Comparatively speaking, from version 1 release 1 to version 1 release 3 it's much more stable product, but overall, it's still not where I would expect it to be as far as stability.

It is hard for us to provide a reflective answer to scalability as we have on average, 3 or 4 editors working in the system making changes at any given time and only 20ish people accessing Hopex in a read-only role. That's not really what I would consider a scalability test.

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We contact technical support pretty routinely. The technical support guys in the United States are very responsive. They are knowledgeable. They do a great job of capturing the information and they coordinate with the corporate resources that they need to to try to address the issues. Where they can provide resolution quickly, they have done so. Where not, they have said, "Okay, we have passed it on to the right individuals. They are looking at it." At that point, there's not much more that the local tech support can do.

When we started the process back in 2011, I did a contract and had a support team and they went through the Gartner Quadrant. They identified Mega, Troux System Architect and two others, I can't remember the other names of them. We basically identified what we wanted to accomplish with the tool and identified a set of metrics that we can sit down and ask them questions to walk them to scenarios. Then did an evaluation and then did a selection.

Overall I would say that this platform, addresses the needs better than other solutions we have looked at, it requires less support. We only have myself and one other administrator that support it.

We have a very in-depth knowledge of the behind-the-scenes workings of the solution. I do know from personal experience that other solutions have more significant footprint of resources that would have to support it. From database people to administrators, etc.

Overall rating: 7-8 (out of 10). Stability is one shortfall and it's probably the major one. I would probably take somewhere between a point and a point and a half off for that. The other one is just the interface. The fact that we have to do some things through the full client on the server as opposed to being able to do everything from a web interface management platform is in the reach of another half a point to a point.

Know what you are trying to accomplish with it, to know what you need, and whether it can truly provide what you need. The best outcome that you can get is that you have that view into how everything is tied together. In other words, what should be out there in the architecture or what should be out there in the environment and what should be providing to support to support the business.

The most valuable features for us are related to business processes.

The features are limited. I'm hoping in the future the solution will be bigger and include more items. Right now, overall, it needs more.

I've been using the solution for three years so far.

At first, the solution wasn't too stable. It's improved. Now it's okay.

The solution is scalable. If a company needs to expand it, it's completely possible to do so. 

We only have one person currently working on the solution.

The initial implementation has a moderate amount of difficulty. It's mostly easy, but there were a few items in the release I implemented that were challenging. 

Deployment took us about three days. It didn't take too long.

The licensing is on a yearly basis. I'm not sure exactly what the yearly costs are, as I don't handle this aspect of the solution. I believe it may be around $2,000-$3,000.

We're only customers. We aren't partners or resellers of the solution.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're currently using.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. The solution is one of the best. We've been very happy with it.

My primary use case is managing enterprise architecture design.

The most valuable parts of this solution are the richness of its features and its easy interface.

This product is expensive and would be improved by lowering its price.

I've been using this solution for two years.

I've had no problems or glitches with the stability.

There have been no issues with scalability.

The setup was pretty straightforward.

Before implementing, make sure to do your due diligence on the whole enterprise. I would give this solution a score of nine out of ten.