TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

IBM Rational System Architect Designer vs. Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    IBM Rational System Architect Designer

    Score6.2 out of 10
    N/AIBM Rational System Architect is an enterprise architecture management platform, that enables the use of abstraction to preserve design intents and tribal memory, and to provide auditable evidence of conformance to policies.N/A

    Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AEnterprise Architect is the flagship architecture management platform from global, Australian-headquartered company Sparx Systems.

    $229

    per license

    Pricing
    IBM Rational System Architect DesignerSparx Systems Enterprise Architect
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Professional
    $229
    per license
    Corporate
    $299
    per license
    Unified
    $499
    per license
    Ultimate
    $699
    per license
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IBM Rational System Architect DesignerSparx Systems Enterprise Architect
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    IBM Rational System Architect DesignerSparx Systems Enterprise Architect
    Considered Both Products
    IBM
    No answer on this topic
    Sparx Systems
    Chose Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect
    Price: Sparx blows away the competition being less expensive by orders of magnitude Features: It compares favorably with the competition w.r.t. modeling architecture. It's not an APM, risk management or any other kind of tool. Support: It provides excellent e-mail technical …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    IBM Rational System Architect DesignerSparx Systems Enterprise Architect
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect
    Score8.4 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect
    Score8.4 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IBM Rational System Architect DesignerSparx Systems Enterprise Architect
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.5
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IBM Rational System Architect DesignerSparx Systems Enterprise Architect
    Likelihood to Recommend
    IBM
    If you need a whole infrastructure and architect view, IBM Rational System Architect is the way to go. If you need a single diagram or your business process is young enough to support hard documenting, you are fine with an open source tool.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sparx Systems
    Enterprise Architect can be used to capture business requirements, design and management of all successive models, algorithms, process flows/workflows, design of business data objects and other artifacts. The strong point is the ability to link the items in all models with each other, the more time the analysts and designers "invest" into making nice and clearly defined models, the higher the future pay-off by any successive changes to the systems. Enterprise Architect is not a good tool for capturing rather unstructured business requirements, use e.g. Confluence or other solutions instead. EA should comprise the extracted models with very little unstructured information. Management of the changes process should not be done in Enterprise Architect, rather use JIRA/Confluence or similar.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    IBM
    • MS Office exporting
    • UML modeling
    • Transformation to code
    • A reverse transformation from code
    • Integrates with other IBM products
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sparx Systems
    • Open Architecture - A wide and extensive set of options, plug-ins and customization options make Sparx EA more of a tool kit than just a tool. Most tools allow customization but Sparx EA is built from the ground up with this in mind.
    • Wide variety of formats, lexicons, standards and data import export capabilities allow different roles to interact with the information in different ways.
    • Automated report generation allows architects and designers to spend less taking on word processing and more time on performing architecture and design.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    IBM
    • Always has a price. And IBM is not cheap
    • Sequence diagrams can get messy (still has a good UI)
    • Only support few databases as backend repositories like SQL Server and Oracle
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sparx Systems
    • Needs someone that is very conversant with business modelling terminology
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Sparx Systems
    The support team of Sparx EA, based in Australia, is always willing to help and give direction.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    IBM
    If you have a budget or the need for a complex modeler or need diagram transformation to code or vice-versa, IBM Rational System Architect is the way to go. If you need few diagrams or don't need the complexity or don't have a budget, Bizagi or Star UML get the things done.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sparx Systems
    BiZZdesign represents a different new concept to enterprise architecture, its gravity center is not technical modelling, but rather a view on capturing the whole end-user experience or customer journey. It also allows to grasp areas as internal company capabilities, required for adoption/changes and operation of the solution, uses the same Archimate modelling language. This solution is in my opinion a new generation enabling to not only design the solutions, but also manage the whole application portfolio with respect to capabilities and requirement parameters.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    IBM
    • Clients like good modeling. A good diagram reduce costs in incidents and doubts of bad interpretations
    • Reduce costs of recognition of old software.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sparx Systems
    • This program speed up the development process. It generates the actual code with my model classes after modeling
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots