The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Architecture Management Suites, Q4 2024 | 001a000001AEtekAAD | 58bffb69

EAM Suites Help Architects Manage Tech Complexity And Business Outcomes

Architects use enterprise architecture management (EAM) suites to manage a variety of strategic and daily activities — such as analyzing and managing enterprisewide application and technology estates; influencing strategic direction; and tracking the results of architectural change — and to provide insights into the performance of the EA organization. While these suites aren’t new, their providers continue to invest in tools that help enterprise architects demonstrate the value of their discipline in enabling business transformation: The latest iterations offer digital twins, EA democratization, AI smart agents, AI chatbots, demand management features, and architecture decision records. These capabilities help architects innovate and become more influential, agile, accountable, and collaborative.

Evaluation Summary

The Forrester Wave™ evaluation highlights Leaders, Strong Performers, and Contenders (see Figures 1 and 2). We intend this evaluation to be a starting point only and encourage clients to view product evaluations and adapt the findings based on their priorities using Forrester’s interactive provider comparison experience.

This graphic plots vendors by their overall ranking, determined by current offering and strategy scores. This graphic has an associated spreadsheet that includes all data presented. Please access the spreadsheet for details.

Figure 1 - Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Architecture Management Suites, Q4 2024

This table shows vendors’ criteria scores by current offering and strategy. This graphic has an associated spreadsheet that includes all data presented. Please access the spreadsheet for details.

Figure 2 - Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Architecture Management Suites Scorecard, Q4 2024

Leaders

Orbus Software

Orbus Software, founded in 2004, has an established EA tool and has invested in AI and smart agents.

  1. Strategy. Orbus Software scores highly for its vision, adoption, and community. The firm seeks to leverage the Microsoft Office 365 ecosystem to enable EA adoption. It has invested significantly in AI, which differentiates it from other vendors in the market. Orbus Software stands out for its strategic investments in and roadmap for smart agents that can automate, suggest, or recommend actions to optimize the application landscape.
  2. Capabilities. Orbus Software stands out for its AI and automation capabilities. It has an AI-assisted orchestration platform, while its chatbot can 1) create customized reports, 2) inspect EA content, and 3) analyze EA roadmaps using what-if scenarios with AI support. The firm also has a notable sustainability module, which enables users to formulate strategic sustainability goals; it integrates with the Microsoft BI suite for geographical representations of Scope 1, 2, and 3 carbon emissions. Its EA modeling and assessment use existing information to propose a full range of filters, allowing users to easily build analysis and reporting functionality.
  3. Customer feedback. Orbus customers gave it superior feedback. They highlighted its reliability as well as its clear and valuable external communications. They also commended its customer community and the peer connections they have formed there.
  4. Forrester’s take. EA professionals seeking a solution that uses leading-edge AI and helps their organization with its sustainability goals should consider Orbus Software.

View Orbus Software’s detailed scorecard.

MEGA International

MEGA International, founded in 1991, is an established vendor in the market and possesses a complete offer. MEGA International is merging with Bizzdesign and another leading EA vendor; this process should be complete by the end of 2024.

  1. Strategy. MEGA International’s strategy comprises a unified platform with a strong user experience that enables customers to start using it quickly. Its vision centers on driving business value with innovation to offer a key strategic advantage, explaining its heavy investment in AI and automation. Its roadmap includes multiple AI-driven improvements, enhanced architecture discovery, and federated architecture features. MEGA International’s partner ecosystem is its biggest competitive advantage.
  2. Capabilities. MEGA International’s AI and automation features are the best in the market — notably its automatic business capability map building and assessment as well as its automatic pairing of applications with processes. Its sustainability offering stands out for its ability to assemble detailed greenhouse gas data and aggregate it in strategic dashboards in order to monitor assets and uncover quick wins. Its digital twin features are relatively advanced and include process mining import and process simulation; it also offers support for architecture democratization and architecture decision records.
  3. Customer feedback. Customers commended MEGA International’s integrity and the quality of support that they receive. However, they also highlighted areas for improvement in the customer community and external communications.
  4. Forrester’s take. EA professionals who want unique AI options, excellent IT sustainability features, and support in demonstrating their business value should consider MEGA International.

View MEGA International’s detailed scorecard.

Bizzdesign

Bizzdesign, founded in 2000, is an established vendor in the market with a reputation for business-driven EA. Bizzdesign is in the process of merging with MEGA International and another leading EA vendor; this process should be complete by the end of 2024.

  1. Strategy. Bizzdesign stands out for its strong solution roadmap that focuses on real-time collaboration, AI functionality, and increased solution architecture support. The firm scores highly for its pricing strategy and flexibility. It has also invested in its community adoption program.
  2. Capabilities. Bizzdesign’s user empowerment capabilities excel: It supports democratization via AI with a best-in-class natural language analyzer and artifact describer, which enables architects and nonexperts alike to quickly generate descriptions of architecture artifacts. Bizzdesign stands out for its business capability architecture assessment, which provides powerful analysis and includes accelerators like preconfigured maturity questions. Bizzdesign offers the ability to integrate with API management solutions to allow architects to track and manage API service usage in order to promote application decoupling. Its interface with process mining software helps architects identify value stream optimization opportunities. Bizzdesign offers support for architecture decision records.
  3. Customer feedback. Customers praised Bizzdesign’s dependability and the exceptional level of support it provides to get customers off the ground. However, they told us that a more customized approach to external communications and stronger EA peer connections would be beneficial.
  4. Forrester’s take. Customers looking for a high-quality EAM suite with strong implementation support should consider Bizzdesign.

View Bizzdesign’s detailed scorecard.

Software AG

Software AG, founded in 1969, is an established vendor in the market and is noted for its approach to sustainability.

  1. Strategy. Software AG’s strategy is mostly on par with the others evaluated. Where it excels is in its roadmap: This focuses on new AI analysis features, architecture cost predictions, and, uniquely, support for SAP transformation management as its customers navigate the transition to SAP S/4HANA.
  2. Capabilities. Software AG’s AI investments have resulted in strong speech-to-text capabilities; its Alfabot chatbot enables powerful queries, artifact management, analysis, and automation. The firm’s superior sustainability capability offers a fully monitored ecosystem ranging from strategic support to highly granular data capture and analysis. Software AG also stands out for its integration ecosystem, architecture decision record, demand management, strategic portfolio management, and metrics dashboard: The Alfabet Fastlane platform’s capabilities in these areas help architects communicate with nontechnical stakeholders and better manage the demands of the architecture practice.
  3. Customer feedback. Customers praised Software AG’s integrity and outstanding partnership in working with them. However, they suggested that the firm’s support capabilities require improvement.
  4. Forrester’s take. EA professionals who need to quickly improve their EA capabilities should consider Software AG’s Alfabet Fastlane platform.

View Software AG’s detailed scorecard.

Strong Performers

ValueBlue

ValueBlue was founded in 2011; it offers a mature EAM suite that links strategic planning with project execution.

  1. Strategy. ValueBlue scores above par for its partner ecosystem; it has become one of the largest in terms of delivery partners, commercial partners, and alliances, allowing it to expand globally. It has also received many awards for its customer service. ValueBlue is extending its offering to innovation and development teams, helping them with solution design and execution. However, although the quality of its new features means they bring undisputed value, they could be delivered more quickly in line with the pace of competitors.
  2. Capabilities. ValueBlue offers powerful business process and capability architecture modeling, as well as superior metrics, dashboards, and reporting. The firm includes demand management features, from inside or outside the tool, that architects can prioritize with their own set of parameters. The suite has superior support for business architecture modeling with templates, AI assistance, and prefilled questionnaires. ValueBlue lacks a digital twin feature.
  3. Customer feedback. Customers note that ValueBlue acts with integrity and offers best-in-class onboarding and training. They say it has room for improvement with its customer community.
  4. Forrester’s take. EA professionals who want a pragmatic and effective offering should consider ValueBlue.

View ValueBlue’s detailed scorecard.

Avolution

Founded in 2001, Avolution is well established in the EAMS market. It is looking to democratize its tool and use digital twin features to get to the next level.

  1. Strategy. Avolution scores above par for adoption and community. Adoption and engagement are a priority: The firm offers best-in-class support, self-service training, and services to customers to ensure that the architecture discipline is seen as essential. Community is also a major focus: Avolution connects with numerous EA communities, solicits customer feedback, and uses social media to expand its footprint. However, the firm lags in innovation.
  2. Capabilities. Avolution’s digital twin capability excels; it can simulate processes and check resource availability and impact in real time. Its low-code/no-code offering includes automation that allows nonarchitects without technical expertise to modify diagrams. Avolution has also developed AI smart agents that continuously analyze repository content to identify optimization opportunities. The firm has an internal demand management system that could benefit from being open to external software as well.
  3. Customer feedback. Customers gave Avolution superior feedback for its integrity, dependability, accompaniment program, vendor support, vendor recommendations, and supplied services. Their feedback on external communications and customer community was a little less effusive, suggesting these are areas for improvement.
  4. Forrester’s take. EA professionals looking to demonstrate how architecture delivers technical and, crucially, business value should consider Avolution.

View Avolution’s detailed scorecard.

SAP LeanIX

Founded in 2012, SAP LeanIX has become an established vendor in the market by continuously innovating, expanding its reach, and engaging with clients.

  1. Strategy. Appearing systematically on EAM suite shortlists, SAP LeanIX stands out for its roadmap. In 2024, the firm reinforced its innovation focus by doubling its R&D personnel, and it plans to grow further in 2025. It offers a transparent roadmap that incorporates client input from ideation to adoption.
  2. Capabilities. SAP LeanIX provides fully integrated AI features: Its Joule chatbot with NLP helps architects and nonarchitects find the most relevant artifact in seconds. The vendor’s approach to sustainability, in partnership with PwC, involves building a framework that users can quickly implement to help develop a strategy, monitor progress, and perform simulations. The firm’s collaborative roadmap management feature is also remarkable, as is its business capability architecture assessment. In terms of empowering enterprise architects, SAP LeanIX has the unique ability to communicate and publish any EA repository object on portals.
  3. Customer feedback. Customers find that SAP LeanIX is very intuitive and offers a great user experience in terms of sharing knowledge holistically. Customers also find its pricing quite high.
  4. Forrester’s take. SAP LeanIX is the natural choice for companies that rely heavily on SAP; non-SAP shops should consider this platform for its application and technical architecture expertise.

View SAP LeanIX’s detailed scorecard.

Ardoq

Founded in 2013, Ardoq is a growing EAM cloud-native platform. Its joint solution with Celonis increases its business transformation capabilities significantly.

  1. Strategy. Ardoq has above-par scores for vision and innovation. Its vision reorients enterprise architecture to focus on driving value for the business; its partnership with Celonis supports its desire to be an advisor to the CEO. In this evaluation, Ardoq dedicates the highest proportion of budget to innovation, which will benefit from Celonis’ know-how. Ardoq’s deep engagement and meaningful connections worldwide means its community is notable.
  2. Capabilities. Ardoq excels in EA democratization with AI: It proposes AI repository updates while keeping humans in the loop for final validation. It scores above par for API and microservices usage, thanks to its integration of CI/CD pipelines to show application decoupling and help manage costs. The firm recently acquired AI-powered ShiftX to offer fast, lightweight process modeling. Its business capability architecture assessment includes maturity methodology guides, such as the viable system model. Ardoq could further empower architects by including demand management and architecture decision records.
  3. Customer feedback. Customers noted that it is a dependable vendor with strong customer support. While rating its external communications as satisfactory, they mentioned that it had room for improvement, such as being more industry specific.
  4. Forrester’s take. EA professionals looking to build a practice with excellent application portfolio management and a focus on process should consider Ardoq.

View Ardoq’s detailed scorecard.

BOC Group

BOC Group, founded in 1995, is an established vendor in the EAM suite market. Its enterprise architecture management platform supports technical and business transformation with collaborative features, using global standards like ArchiMate.

  1. Strategy. Innovation stands out, forming part of BOC Group’s DNA. Over the years, it has enabled Industry 4.0 and the internet of things as well as created digital twins, for which it received numerous awards. Its research acts as an engine for growth, fostering partnerships with other firms and universities.
  2. Capabilities. BOC Group’s AI features help users with application portfolio assessments and decisions. Its modeling capacities use the TOGAF method and ArchiMate framework.
  3. Customer feedback. Customers appreciate the ADOIT Enterprise Architecture suite’s ability to adapt to the market as well as its simplicity and ease of use.
  4. Forrester’s take. EA professionals looking for a pragmatic, user-centric approach to EA that appeals to specialists and nonspecialists alike should consider BOC Group.

View BOC Group’s detailed scorecard.

Contenders

North Highland

Founded in 1992, North Highland is a management consulting firm specializing in change and transformation. Its NH360 platform integrates strategic portfolio management with enterprise architecture, offering organizations a comprehensive view of their applications, processes, information, and technology landscape to support transformation initiatives.

  1. Strategy. North Highland has on-par scores for vision, innovation, roadmap, and adoption. Its ongoing innovation aims to create a transformational intelligence platform, using AI to help with what-if scenario analysis, risk identification, and roadmap generation. The firm delivers roadmap features monthly; it proactively shares new tool features with customers to gain customer input and boost adoption. However, North Highland doesn’t engage enough with the wider community because of its focus on working with core clients and consulting. And with just one partnership, it needs to expand its partner ecosystem.
  2. Capabilities. North Highland’s strategic portfolio management capability excels at aligning strategic initiatives with extensive capabilities like investment governance, resource management, roadmapping, and dependency management; it includes a full range of execution methodologies like agile and waterfall. Its suite lags in terms of broader AI features, IT carbon footprint calculation and reporting, architecture decision records, and integration ecosystem.
  3. Customer feedback. Customers noted that North Highland acts with integrity and has an outstanding onboarding/training program. They told us that it could improve its external communications and, more importantly, its customer community.
  4. Forrester’s take. EA professionals looking for a strong connection between enterprise architecture and strategic portfolio management should consider North Highland.

View North Highland’s detailed scorecard.

Sparx Systems

Sparx Systems was founded in 1996 and is an established vendor in the application architecture domain.

  1. Strategy. Sparx Systems gains on-par scores for innovation, its partner ecosystem, adoption, and pricing flexibility and transparency. It has a large R&D budget, enabling innovation in AI and analysis features like an impressive chatbot that helps architects with artifact creation. Its partner ecosystem is quite large, with resellers worldwide. Trerado, Sparx Systems’ next-generation collaborative cloud platform, supports highly transparent pricing. However, it lags in its vision and community: It lacks a clear business focus other than BPMN diagramming, and it has a history of limited customer community interactions, although this is now changing.
  2. Capabilities. Sparx Systems scores above par for fostering API and microservices usage: Users can fully model, manage, and monitor application landscape decoupling as well as track costs. The firm also scores highly for its mature management of architecture decision records. It must invest in AI smart agents, EA democratization, low-code/no-code, and demand management capabilities to improve its offering.
  3. Customer feedback. Sparx Systems customers find the tool is easy to use; it includes powerful modeling capabilities, especially UML, for a reasonable price.
  4. Forrester’s take. EA professionals looking for an application architecture platform that has successfully integrated TOGAF, ArchiMate, and UML should consider Sparx Systems.

View Sparx Systems’ detailed scorecard.

Bee360

Bee360, founded in 2003, focuses on how an EAM suite can enable business and IT transformation with a holistic and pragmatic view.

  1. Strategy. Bee360 has on-par scores for its vision, roadmap, and partner ecosystem. The vendor’s vision involves a holistic approach to enable better decision-making. It bases the success of its strategy on close collaboration with customers: Its roadmap includes customer-validated features delivered quarterly or monthly. Bee360’s partner ecosystem comprises managed service providers, consulting partners, and technology partners worldwide. However, its scores for innovation, adoption, and community lag. While targeting the C-suite can sometimes be beneficial, engaging with customer success managers will make a difference in adoption. Its community consists only of standard channels, so it needs to incorporate quality assessments.
  2. Capabilities. Bee360’s demand management stands out: This feature is available either inside the EA tool or users can import it; demand prioritization includes business and IT criteria to help architects make data-driven decisions. However, the firm lags on several criteria that help empower architects, such as digital twin, democratization with AI, architecture process mining, fostering API and microservices use, and architecture decision records.
  3. Customer feedback. Customers viewed Bee360 as a vendor with high ethical standards that provides high-quality customer support and is highly dependable. However, they noted that its external communications, customer community, and customer recommendations could be better.
  4. Forrester’s take. EA professionals looking for an EA tool that serves strategic and day-to-day architecture tasks should consider Bee360.

View Bee360’s detailed scorecard.

Vendor Offerings

Forrester evaluated the offerings listed below (see Figure 3).

This table lists the products that Forrester evaluated for this report. This graphic has an associated spreadsheet that includes all data presented. Please access the spreadsheet for details.

Figure 3 - Evaluated Vendors And Product Information

Evaluation Overview

We evaluated vendors against three categories:

  1. Current offering. Each vendor’s position on the vertical axis of the Forrester Wave graphic indicates the strength of its current offering.
  2. Strategy. Placement on the horizontal axis indicates the strength of the vendors’ strategies, including elements such as vision and innovation.
  3. Customer feedback. A halo on a vendor’s marker indicates above-average customer feedback relative to the other evaluated vendors. A double halo indicates outstanding customer feedback: We consider the vendor to be a Customer Favorite. As part of this evaluation, we speak with up to three customers of each vendor. We also consider customer input from our previous research.

Vendor Inclusion Criteria

Each of the vendors we included in this assessment has:

  1. **An EAM suite with more than 10millioninrevenue.Forresterincludedvendorsthathavemorethan10 million in revenue.** Forrester included vendors that have more than 10 million in revenue for their EAM suite.
  2. Significant revenue and customer presence in at least two regions. Forrester included vendors that have a significant presence (of both revenue and customer count) in at least two regions: North America, EMEA, Asia Pacific, and Latin America.
  3. Foundational EAM suite capabilities that clients commonly request. Forrester included vendors with proven foundational EAM suite capabilities and competitive capabilities that clients commonly request, with the appropriate partnerships and support models to allow integration into a customer’s technology and business landscape.
  4. Forrester mindshare. Forrester included vendors that peers often mentioned as competitors in client bids in our overview of this market or that were frequently brought up in analyst briefings, inquiries, and interviews.

Other Notable Vendors

The Forrester Wave evaluation is an assessment of the top vendors in the market; it doesn’t represent the entire vendor landscape. You’ll find more information about this market and additional vendors that Forrester considers to be notable for enterprise clients in our corresponding report: The Enterprise Architecture Management Suites Landscape, Q2 2024.

Supplemental Material

The Forrester Wave Methodology

A Forrester Wave is a guide for buyers considering their purchasing options in a technology marketplace. To offer an equitable process for all participants, Forrester follows The Forrester Wave™ Methodology to evaluate participating vendors.

In our review, we conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors to consider for the evaluation. From that initial pool of vendors, we narrow our final list based on the inclusion criteria. We then gather details of product and strategy through a detailed questionnaire, demos and briefings, and interviews with customers (vendors may provide up to three reference customers; we also consider feedback from other customers we've spoken with). We use those inputs, along with the analyst’s experience and expertise in the marketplace, to score vendors, using a relative rating system that compares each vendor against the others in the evaluation.

We include the publishing date (quarter and year) clearly in the title of each Forrester Wave report. We evaluated the vendors participating in this Forrester Wave using materials they provided to us by September 23, 2024, and did not allow additional information after that point. We encourage readers to evaluate how the market and vendor offerings change over time.

In accordance with our vendor review policy, Forrester asks vendors to review our findings prior to publishing to check for accuracy. We score vendors that met our defined inclusion criteria but declined to participate in or contributed only partially to the evaluation in accordance with our vendor participation policy and publish their positioning along with those of the participating vendors.

BOC Group and SAP LeanIX declined to participate in the full Forrester Wave evaluation process. For vendors that are not full participants, Forrester uses primary and secondary research in its analysis. For example, we might use public information, data gathered via briefings, and independently sourced customer interviews to score the vendor. We may ask the vendor for an abbreviated briefing and/or to provide reference customers. We may also rely on estimates to score vendors.

Integrity Policy

We conduct all our research, including Forrester Wave evaluations, in accordance with the integrity policy posted on our website.

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