We performed a comparison between IBM Rational System Architect and Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Enterprise Architecture Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"We have seen ROI with this solution over the years that we have used it."
"The solution is pretty stable."
"The user interface is good. It's both clear and comprehensible. It's easy to work with."
"There are a lot of features I find valuable, but I think that the metamodel customization is one of the best features that the solution offers."
"The solution is easy to use, supports SysML and UML, and is able to connect to MATLAB. This is very important for us."
"Scalable solution for modeling, project sharing, and collaboration. Support for it is good."
"Its ease of use and the breadth of the toolkit are most valuable. It has an incredible repository of artifacts to work with, and they're all cross-referenced. It works with a whole bunch of different standards. It works with BPMN, which is Business Process Modeling Notation, and it also works with something called TOGAF, which is the Open Group Architecture Foundation. There are different layers when you're dealing with architecture. There is the user interface, application, data, data servers, and all that kind of stuff. You have the infrastructure, hardware, and software layers, and then you have the application and business capability layers. You can model a business process and decompose it into all of the applications, data, and hardware to support it."
"Modeling is a part of my work, and it has a lot of standard modeling languages. It is quite wide, and a lot is possible in it. We are not programming it ourselves, but if you are into programming and developing software yourself, you can go further and do a lot with Sparx. You can work from the framework and go into the details. With this solution, you get a lot of value at a low cost. It is also quite intuitive in terms of use. I like the use of it."
"It is a handy tool for visual modeling that provides opportunities for analysis, design, and support of models using ArchiMate, UML."
"Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect was easy to set up and it took just twenty minutes."
"It is a very rich tool in terms of the functionality, and the types of diagrams, that you can create in this tool."
"It's a stable and scalable solution. I like that it's similar to Rational Rose."
"This solution can be more user-friendly and easier to use, with better dashboards."
"The solution needs to better integrate with other products, like Microsoft."
"The reverse engineering of the database is already there, but in the next release I would like to see some pilot supplied with the solution in order to address any database."
"There needs to be more information at the outset about how to use the solution and how to deploy it. The deployment process needs improvement."
"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."
"The templates for documentation should be enhanced to include complex documents such as template RFP, or Non functional requirements template."
"The window froze for five or ten seconds. You can click and click again and it takes a second to come up. It might have been specific to a version."
"Inconsistent UI elements must be tidied up with the toolbox gaps removed."
"The user interface is not so good. It's not easy for someone to use it at first. The product takes some getting used to."
"The UI could be improved and made a little bit more presentable."
"I think the product is good. When I'm trying to do something specific for some part of project documentation, it's hard to get it figured out if you don't use it all the time. It's such a massive tool, it's hard to figure out how to dig in and get to the documentation where you have to be to get some idea of what to do. There are not a lot of examples that I'm aware of to be able to do that."
"Its best features are not intuitive or easy to learn. Most companies I have worked with, when I see what they are doing with it , are not using more than 5% of what they could and should be doing with it."
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Earn 20 points
IBM Rational System Architect is ranked 20th in Enterprise Architecture Management while Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is ranked 2nd in Enterprise Architecture Management with 97 reviews. IBM Rational System Architect is rated 7.4, while Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of IBM Rational System Architect writes "Modeling is useful, but many features need improvement and technical support is lacking". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect writes "Easy to set up and had no issues with stability, but it's not a very friendly tool, and its database modeling and entity-relationship modeling functions need improvement". IBM Rational System Architect is most compared with , whereas Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is most compared with Visual Paradigm, Visio, No Magic MagicDraw, Lucidchart and SAP PowerDesigner. See our IBM Rational System Architect vs. Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect report.
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