Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools Oct 2018

[Sunshine]

Another Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools.
Puts Sparx EA down in the Niche Play quadrant.
https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-5JYE8BP&ct=181010&st=sb
Dunno but can't help but feel they aren't evaluating it right.

[qwerty]

Maybe they thought that Enterprise Architect is meant for Enterprise Architecture?

q.

[Glassboy]

Maybe they thought that Enterprise Architect is meant for Enterprise Architecture?

That's what I use it for :-)

[qwerty]

Yes, sure. Me too. But the definition of Enterprise Architecture is somewhat diffuse.

EA(tool) is pretty neat if you stick with UML to handle EA(methodology).

q.

[matthew.james]

As I've said before in these forums, Sparx is not positioned 'well' in the enterprise space due to its perceived lack of enterprise features and frankly it's price - it's clearly too cheap to be any good (!)

Having said that, Sparx is an extremely capable modelling tool, perhaps the best out there.  But the majority of its features and capabilities are really more aimed at system architecture and provide little value for enterprise architecture.  EA provides nothing significant in terms of planning, application portfolio management and (out of the box) management reporting and dashboards. This is both a strength and a weakness - tools that are strong in those aspect also tend to be more constrained in how they can be used.

I personally would push all of the top quadrant tools (with the possible exception of Bizz) back to the centre or into the bottom left.

[TomO]

I would disagree that there is a perceived lack of enterprise features in EA.

From my personal perspective the Gartner MQ process is 100% the views, perspectives and opinions of the Gartner analyst team, and even then, the rankings are only “in relation to each other”. 

To get into the MQ report the evaluated tools must include the core enterprise architecture capabilities, if the tool fails or is substandard in any of them, then they are not considered for the report.

In the Sparx Systems specific section of the report, Gartner suggests that Enterprise Architect adequately covers these core capabilities.

Also Gartner suggests as a result of the market for EA tools maturing, these core capabilities no longer enable clear differentiation between products.

So the Analysts came up with Critical Capabilities which they recommend EA practitioners pick 'several' (not all) to evaluate when selecting an EA tool according to their needs including: Modeling, Business analysis and design, Presentation, Usability and Monitoring.

Where vendors are positioned in the Magic Quadrant is solely based on the weighting the Gartner Analysts choose to give to each of the critical capabilities. If I remember correctly, if you are a Gartner research client you can actually log into the research portal and assign your own weightings to the critical capabilities – completely changing the position of the vendors in it to suit your own needs.

Finally if you would like to provide your own reviews on Enterprise Architect and view the reviews of others, Gartner have a Peer Insights page. Currently we are rated higher than 4 other vendors that are positioned higher and righter than us in the MQ and we have the second most reviews.
https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/enterprise-architecture-tools/v2

This year, like previous years, we will be exhibiting at the Gartner Enterprise Architecture & Technology Innovation Summit as a Silver sponsor (not Platinum ;-) in London and Orlando. So if you are in the area or in attendance please feel free to drop by and say hi.