Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect Reviews

My company is a leading software team. I tend to get brought in early stages for understanding and identifying problems. I look through what the customers are actually doing and I tend to move on into the system's analysis and architecture to see whether there are opportunities for interventions and gaps.

The features I find most valuable is the ability to create a document and then put it into a OneCare artifact. This feature allows me to share the visual I bring about with other communities that are not system analysts because not everyone can afford to have a copy of Enterprise Architect. 

Additionally, the solution operates well as a whole and has very comprehensive capabilities.

The areas of improvement should be focused on utility service such as producing better graphics, perhaps having a wider image library set and producing better models for working directly with customers. The solution does not provide things like shadow effect and 3D computer graphics instead of 2D.

More polishing on the presentation should be included in the next release. 

I have been using this on a regular basis for the last four years. For the additional six years, I have used the solution in intervals as I needed.

Initially, I found the stability of this solution reliable until there was an unexpected access crash leaving an LDB that prevented me from accessing my database, even after deleting the LDB file.  I had to use the previous version to solve the problem which I had to work on for two days.

I find the solution very configurable. I could go in and change the format for export. I brought products into the ArchiMate from EA and the other way around. They seemed to work because they store them as common components.

The support team have been very good at responding and coming back quickly with a query.

I previously used to work on Salamander but it did not add on what I already know. I was also recently teaching Visual Paradigm and ArchiMate.

The initial setup was straightforward to run as a single user on a single machine. There might have been an issue around installing access to the image library on the cloud environment. I think it was just a patch version that I needed to get to fix the issue.

The licence has a costly upfront fee which gets you access. You have to pay an annual maintenance fee, which is less.

I think the pricing is justified because I use it very often. 

I would certainly recommend this solution if you are a serious business or a system architect, who are modelling complex systems. You will already be aware of the product and you will know what it could do for you.

I rate Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect an eight out of ten. 

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is used by our architects to put out artifacts, collaborate, work together, and share those artifacts. The product is used to maintain the versions of architectural diagrams, use case diagrams, etc.

I'd like Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect to be more stable, and have a more improved performance. It should also have a sharing feature and allow us to easily share artifacts with our business partners, rather than requiring them to install the product on their site first. If people who don't have licenses could also view what we're sharing, that would be great.

I've used Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect for the past 10 years.

This product should be more stable.

The cloud version of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is scalable, without a doubt.

I'm satisfied with the technical support for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect.

The initial setup for this product was slightly complicated. It was complicated for the business users, the non-IT teams, and the non-technical teams, but I was able to do the setup myself.

We pay for the license of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, and it is a yearly subscription.

I evaluated Visio. I use it in parallel with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect.

I used Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect on-premises at the start, then later on for other clients, I used it on cloud. I used the latest version on cloud, but for the on-premises deployment, I used an earlier version, but I don't remember the version number.

There is a learning curve with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, e.g. to be comfortable and to start using it full-fledged. It took me a month of practice.

On average, we have 50 users of this product, and 20 technical people in charge of its deployment.

I can recommend Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect to other people who may want to start implementing it.

My rating for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is eight out of ten.

We use it for model-based system engineering (MBSE).

I think having some of the profiles and ready-made templates is an extremely helpful feature. This is one of the biggest features that I find very useful in Sparx.

The documentation and the help center within the tool are very helpful as well. They are written in much simpler terms. The examples are very clear, and the video tutorials are there. You can find a lot of video tutorials that can definitely help you to understand how to do certain tasks that you want to accomplish in Sparx.

I think it's very stable and scalable as well. It is also an affordable solution.

The UI is a little bit outdated. It should be more fresh and clean.

The other thing that I would really love to see improve is the roadmap capabilities. They advertise that you can use Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect to do roadmapping, but I don't think that this is really accurate because the roadmapping capabilities are very basic and you can't really do a lot with them.

Also, the Veeva Forms Management capabilities, which are built-in, could be improved. They are okay, but they could be much better as well.

I would love to see more emphasis on Agile product development within the tool itself. So, if I am managing an Agile project or a scrum project, I would love to be able to plan my sprints within the tool and manage user stories, use cases, and test cases within the tool itself without the need to use any other tool.

I've been using Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect for approximately two years now.

It is a very stable product.

It is a scalable solution, and we currently have three system architects who use it.

We hope to increase usage in the future. We are a consulting company, and if we got a project that required the use of any of the features available in Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, then it would be the tool that we will be using.

We used MagicDraw and switched to Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect because it has a better UI and also has profiles and ready-made templates.

The initial setup was very straightforward; very easy. It took a very short amount of time, and we were able to have things up and running in less than a day.

I implemented it myself.

We absolutely feel that Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect provides a good ROI.

We have an annual license, and it's very affordable.

It's a very good starting point and a very affordable solution with a lot of features. I would rate it at nine on a scale from one to ten.

The primary use cases are electronic signature design. The electronic signature is typically the NETLOCK, and the electric number is a secret, so it's the NETLOCK electronic signature.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

The advantages of Enterprise are that it's cheaper and much more practical than MagicDraw.

The model integrity is not the same as MagicDraw, so MagicDraw is a bit better as a tool.

The integration could be improved.

I have been using this solution for one year, but I don't use Enterprise Architect on a daily basis.

The solution is stable. It doesn't require any specific maintenance.

It's scalable.

I have also used MagicDraw. We changed from MagicDraw to Enterprise Architect because the client has Enterprise Architect, and we have tried to export all the delivery products to the Enterprise Architect, and more or less, it should be possible.

My understanding is that setup is easier than MagicDraw.

We had a yearly license.

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10. 

That tool is still alive. We recognize that 10 years back, it was the same product, and at the moment it seems to be still alive. That means the background of the product is okay, and it can be in life for the next 10 years.

We started to build an architecture based on this tool.

We use if for enterprise architecture with multiple domains.

The most valuable feature is that it provides tuning for multiple layers of enterprise in the business application architecture. 

We can use the same tool for a different audience. It helps our enterprise architects in building their diagrams. It helps with the handling of the application architect when it comes to the development team.

It provides good utilization and it's a convenient tool for building exact architectural work.

One of the drawbacks is that it is oriented on architecture and not user-presented.

Also, one of the disadvantages is that it doesn't provide a better representation level for the readers. It is not integrated with solutions such as Confluence or Jira. This is something that is missing in this solution.

Because it is oriented on architecture, it is not convenient to use this information for the presentations to our clients.

They also have a cloud-based deployment solution and it has a bit more capability to communicate to clients and to the sales team.

I would like to see integration with Confluence or any other TRM, and the capability to integrate with the data storage, such as a repository similar to GitHub.

We have been using Sparx System Enterprise Architect for approximately 10 years.

We are using version 14 or 15.

It is difficult for us to judge the stability because it is open for us in Europe and spread between two cities, Paris and Amsterdam.

We don't have a strong demand to have a highly scalable solution for building enterprise-related activities.

We have 50 users in our organization who are using this solution.

We may be increasing our usage, as we have had many acquisitions and have more people than we need.

We are not acquainted with any other solution.

If you are talking about Enterprise Architects, the initial setup is quite simple.

We want to keep all of the information inside our own infrastructure. We have our own data centers and for now, we would like for it not to go into cloud deployment.

We had help from the vendor for the implementation.

Pricing is open information.

They have the price on their site for the enterprise version, and we do receive a small discount.

We are doing some slow research in the direction of switching to another program. For this year, it's not in the roadmap, but I will approve that for next year because we really want to consider some alternatives.

For example, solutions like LeanIX have more capabilities for integration between different levels of data representation. We can integrate the system with Confluence, and it can integrate with Jira.

We have been quite happy for a number of years, but it has several drawbacks. We are considering an alternative. We are not looking to get rid of this solution but use another product and use them both for a while.

I would rate Sparx System Enterprise Architects a seven out of ten.

We use the product to design and develop databases, leveraging its features to create robust database models.

The product's most valuable features are the database design and development capabilities. These features are adequate for my needs, allowing me to create detailed and efficient database models.

The product could be improved in terms of its ease of use and documentation. While it offers a lot of functionality, it can be difficult to grasp how to utilize these features effectively.

I have been using Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect for over five years. 

The platform is stable and reliable.

My experience with customer service and support has been positive. They generally respond within a reasonable time when I have questions or issues.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward.

The pricing is reasonable, with the ultimate version costing around 290 Euros for renewal and the initial purchase around 600 Euros. There are no additional costs for maintenance or support, as these are included.

I would recommend this solution for those who work in diverse environments and need a versatile tool.

I rate it a seven. 

When I'm developing some of my applications, I collect the requirements from the customer and understand the workflows for different scenarios. I then model the workflows as the point of reference for the development team.

It allows some kind of reverse engineering, where if you have a database or some different languages, you can reverse engineer and get the diagrams, which is very helpful.

The Business Process Modeling or BPM part is the most valuable. Its ability to simulate scenarios is also very useful.

It can also create descriptions of the workflows. It has a feature in which if you create some BPMN process, a workflow diagram, and the description inside, you can actually simulate the whole scenario, and you get the description. That's very handy.

The Business Process Modeling or BPM feature can be improved to make it more interactive and user friendly because it is a tool for technical people. My current use is only for business process modeling notation and putting in the icons etc. You need to take them in as a class, which makes things very complex. Because of this complexity, it is not an easy-to-handle solution.

Enterprise Architect is not very good for mockups. We cannot create user screens and other similar kinds of stuff, which is bad. For these things, we prefer to use Axure RP and other similar solutions. They should either remove this feature from this product or provide some kind of connectivity with Axure RP so that people can do better mockups of screens and import them.

They need to augment and strengthen the BPM feature, which is the main feature. They need to put in some elements like artificial intelligence and augmented reality. They should look into such features because these things are coming up.

I started using this solution in 2003 when it was version two.

It is quite stable.

It is quite scalable. I didn't have any need to involve 30 or 40 technical business analysts or users. We had just a few users because it is used during the business analysis and design phase. Every team can use its own installation.

It is hard to access those people. You can get in touch only through email. The same problem is there with Visual Paradigm. They are also accessible only through email. I would rate their support a five out of ten.

There were two products, which were very popular initially. One was STP that was developed by people who started the object paradigm and human modeling. Rational Rose was the other one, which was taken away by IBM, and it was lost. After that, many other tools appeared.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is very easy to install.

It is really good if you want to develop workflows. It is not good for data modeling. For data modeling, Visual Paradigm is better.

I would rate Enterprise Architect a seven out of ten.

We use it for modeling and for making strategy.

Sparx offers good flexibility. 

The documentation could be better. Where I work, we speak French and we don't speak English, so we don't have anything in French. It's perfect in English, but we need something in French.

I have been using Sparx for 11 years. 

Stability is not perfect. When you are working with your notebook after 10 minutes that you don't touch your keyboard we see some stability problems with the system. It blocks it. They have to improve this. 

We have 100 tests. We have one company that represents Sparx here in Canada. They work with us and also give us technical support.

It's easy to scale because we integrated with Jira. It was very quick to start our work. It's very easy. It's good.

Their support is perfect. They are quick and courteous. 

We use Bonita, Lucidchart and erwin.

We had three months to compare and after that, we concluded that Bonita was very difficult to use for beginners. You have to have the experience, it's not easy for someone starting their career.

Sparx is more complex but in terms of functionality, it is easier to use. 

The initial setup is okay.

My advice would be to do a lot of training beforehand. We have invested a lot of money in terms of training because we didn't do it before, so it's a little bit difficult. 

In the next release, I would like to see more integration with other tools like Microsoft Azure. That's really important to us. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten.