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Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture

Tools
Published: 3 October 2013

Analyst(s): Julie Short

The EA tool market continues to evolve toward delivering targeted business

outcomes. Used effectively, EA tools enable leading organizations to meet
the demands of today's complex business environment by capturing,
integrating, analyzing and communicating information to guide business
decisions.

Market Definition/Description
To provide significant value to organizations, the discipline of enterprise architecture (EA) must
deliver business outcomes. Organizations that are past the getting-started stage are often
challenged with a number of problems that are beyond the capabilities that office productivity tools
can support. These challenges include managing a large number of artifacts; capturing the complex
relationships between many elements across those artifacts; conducting gap analysis, impact
analysis, scenario planning and modeling; and presenting information to stakeholders for making
strategic investment decisions and supporting governance, risk and compliance (GRC). The EA tool
market continues to evolve to produce tools designed to address these challenges.
Gartner redefined the EA tool market in March 2011, and this definition is still valid today. EA tools
capture, store, structure, analyze and present information pertaining to EA, and should facilitate the
implementation of a business strategy focused on business outcomes and risk mitigation. The
information must be presented to a variety of stakeholders set on operationalizing the future-state
architecture across a number of viewpoints, including business, information, technology and
solutions. This is done to enable business change to support the direction and strategy of the
organization, while confronting many types of business disruptions. At a minimum, these EA tools
should integrate with project and portfolio management solutions to ensure the best investment mix
of projects to execute on business direction, vision and strategy.
EA tools must address the requirements of a variety of business and IT stakeholders in the
organization, and must contain:

A repository that supports, at a minimum, the business, information, technology and solution
viewpoints and their relationships. The repository must also support business direction, vision
and strategy, as well as business disruptions.

Modeling capabilities that support the minimum viewpoints of business, information, technology
and solutions.

Decision analysis capabilities, such as gap analysis, impact analysis, scenario planning and
system thinking.

Presentation capabilities that are visual or interactive to meet the demands of a myriad of
stakeholders.

Administration capabilities that enable security, user management and other tasks.

Configurability capabilities that are extensive, simple and straightforward to accomplish, while
supporting multiple environments.

Support for frameworks and standards, often used while providing the flexibility to modify the
framework.

Usability, including intuitive, flexible and easy-to-learn UIs.

See "Market Drives Gartner to Redefine the Enterprise Architecture Tool Marketplace" for more
information on the market definition.
EA teams are interested in other tools and occasionally use them. However, these tools do not meet
the Gartner definition of the EA tool marketplace and, as a result, are not included in this research.
This Magic Quadrant focuses primarily on the vendor's placement in the market and not specifically
on the product functionality. One out of the 15 criteria in this Magic Quadrant is related to the
product. The remaining 14 are focused on vendors and their ability to meet the requirements of this
market.
For this Magic Quadrant research, Gartner received information from vendors, end-user customers
and Gartner clients. We analyze company information databases according to the Gartner
1

methodology. Vendor evaluation against our defined evaluation criteria yielded vendor placement in
the Magic Quadrant figure. In the Vendor Strengths and Cautions section of this report, we have not
attempted to mention all the strengths and cautions for each vendor. Rather, the purpose is to
provide guidance on the most important points to consider.
When evaluating vendors, enterprise architects should pay particular attention to the key strengths
and cautions analysis for each vendor. Placement on the Magic Quadrant is not an indicator of
appropriate fitness for the needs of a particular user organization, nor does it resolve the challenges
of new, intermediate or advanced practitioners.

A Variety of Approaches Exist to Deliver Business Outcomes

This year has marked a significant departure from the traditional approach to EA tools. In the past,
many tool providers focused on the technical aspects of their product suites, such as the strength
of their repository or the smoothness of their modeling tools. It was the era of EA tools for the sake
of EA. Gartner has seen a marked departure from this approach and a much-needed refocus on
delivering business outcomes.

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Some vendors have distanced themselves from the terminology of EA. They concentrate on
delivering solutions for operational excellence or enterprise portfolio management, or state that they
now focus on business architecture. EA, by any other name, is still the same discipline it was, and
business architecture has always been an integral part of that discipline. While the discipline has
always been focused on delivering business outcomes, many EA practitioners have forgotten that
purpose (see "EA Stage Planning: Target Business Outcomes" and "Define the Business Outcome
Statement to Guide Enterprise Architecture Efforts").
The overall market is improving its strategy to deliver business outcomes, as demonstrated by the
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many inquiries Gartner receives from clients on this topic. Clients are demanding that these tools
have a short-term ROI so they can justify the investment. This is further evidenced by EA solution
providers' ability to demonstrate an increasing number of business-outcome-related use cases that
represent the challenges organizations face today. The new focus on delivering targeted business
outcomes, on integrating all the viewpoints of EA, and on use cases demonstrating this ability has
led to some significant vendor movement in the market this year. The criteria, weighting and use
cases for the Magic Quadrant may change every year as this market continues to evolve.

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Magic Quadrant
Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools

Source: Gartner (October 2013)

Vendor Strengths and Cautions

Atoll Technologies
Atoll Technologies (www.atollgroup.eu) offers System Architecture Management Utility (SAMU).

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Strengths

Atoll continues its steady improvement as a global player, as evidenced by its recent North
American presence (see "News: SAMU is made available on the U.S. market"). In addition to its
presence in the Middle East, it has regional strength in Central and Eastern Europe, and can
provide strong support to these otherwise underserved markets.

Atoll is improving its focus on the business architecture aspects of EA to complement its
technical product capabilities.

Atoll is providing configuration packs for new customers to make the setup of the repository
more straightforward and easy to accomplish.

Cautions

Atoll has understood that EA includes business architecture and has introduced some limited
business architecture capabilities. For comprehensive EA program support, especially in the
area of business architecture, additional tools may be required.

Atoll remains a small company with a primary focus on the technical architecture and solutions
architecture areas. As a result, large global organizations should ensure that sufficient use
cases and technical support can be provided.

Avolution
Avolution (www.avolution.com.au) offers Abacus.
Strengths

Avolution's Abacus product provides advanced simulation capabilities, enabling decision

analysis for portfolio and life cycle management of architectures using asset timelines and road
maps alongside its fully configurable metamodel and XML base.

Avolution has demonstrated its understanding for addressing the needs of various stakeholders
by adding extensive reporting and business intelligence capabilities.

Cautions

Due to Abacus' flexibility and high degree of configurability, it is tempting for some tool users to
become so enamored with the capabilities that they lose track of the tool's purpose: Help
enterprise architects deliver business outcomes.

Avolution began as an organization closely aligned with university research. Currently, it

leverages its university research along with customer feedback to enhance its product offering.
It is important to keep this in mind when engaging with this vendor.

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BiZZdesign
BiZZdesign (www.bizzdesign.com) offers Architect.
Strengths

BiZZdesign is a young and fast-growing organization, with 140 employees. The vibrancy and
collaboration of this workforce are clearly influencing the look and feel of Architect in products
such as the Business Model Canvas and Decision Modeler, which contains business logic.

BiZZdesign continued to focus on its international growth during the past year by partnering
with resellers in several South American and Eastern European countries.

Cautions

BiZZdesign has demonstrated limited success in moving from a purely academic-driven EA

solution. As a result, some product functionality is still missing, primarily in portfolio analysis
and portfolio management.

Metamodel flexibility, which is required for meeting today's business challenges, continues to
be achieved through the use of a proprietary scripting language that adds data entry controls
and restrictions to the product. It is also used for some advanced reporting capabilities.
Organizations considering BiZZdesign should understand the technical skills required and
prepare for this incremental support effort.

Casewise
Casewise (www.casewise.com) offers Corporate Modeler and related products.
Strengths

Casewise continues to add product functionality, such as Casewise Harmony, a Web-based UI

and platform for performing specific user tasks for decision analysis and collaboration, as part
of its strategy to meet the needs of various stakeholders.

Casewise has improved its international coverage by adding partners from five South American
countries and Canada.

Cautions

Casewise has reduced its number of product offerings and simplified its marketing message,
but its future product strategy remains somewhat unclear. Customers should understand how
Casewise plans to differentiate itself, other than to collaborate, share and govern EA data.

Casewise has signed a number of new partnerships in recent years to extend its reach to a
variety of potential users. However, it needs to clarify how it will continue to support and deliver
business outcomes for users.

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IBM
IBM (www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/systemarchitect/productline) offers Rational System
Architect.
Strengths

IBM has established a substantial presence, positive reputation and longevity in this market.
Overall, Rational System Architect is a robust, feature-rich, mature product with configurability
to meet user requirements, and an extensive business architecture capability.

IBM's global coverage and support structure make it a strong contender for clients that have an
international user base, or are having difficulty finding an EA tool with support in their locations.

IBM continues to move forward with its strategy on the Rational Jazz platform, which includes
life cycle data management encompassing EA and portfolio analysis.

Cautions

IBM's global coverage and support structure does not always indicate that prices or licensing
agreements are globally consistent. Potential customers should understand the limitations or
constraints that may be imposed in their particular regions.

Rational System Architect has historically been challenging to learn and administer. Potential
customers should consider this and prepare for a steep learning curve. However, IBM continues
to make efforts to improve this.

iteratec
Iteratec (www.iteratec.com) offers iteraplan (Enterprise Edition).
Strengths

Among the vendors evaluated in this Magic Quadrant, iteratec is unique in offering a product
with a software source code base that is publicly available for download (because the
Community Edition is open source). The commercially licensed and supported Enterprise
Edition adds features such as support for MySQL, Oracle Database, users/roles/permissions,
and data integration, as well as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) integration.
Iteratec sells a SaaS-hosted alternative. No escrow agreements are necessary for the base
(Community Edition) code; however, some customers may want to consider such agreements
for the additional software unique to the Enterprise Edition.

Iteratec employs thought leaders on the topic of EA and aligns itself with several universities,
which work on innovation of the product and the discipline of EA.

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Cautions

Iteratec focuses on creating and maintaining premier partnerships in many regions. Potential
customers should ensure that the partner in their regions can deliver the same level of quality as
iteratec is known for in Germany, Austria and the German-speaking region of Switzerland.

Large federated organizations should understand the ramifications that this federated structure
presents to iteraplan. Multiple repositories may be necessary and require more administration
than originally thought. Federated organizations must understand the level of information they
need to maintain, as well as to federate.

Mega
Mega (www.mega.com) offers Mega Suite.
Strengths

Mega has a clear identification and understanding of stakeholder expectations across the entire
organization. This enables it to manage information that provides business value across this
spectrum of stakeholders.

Mega uses the Holistic Operational Excellence (HOPEX) platform, a Web-based integrated
platform that includes EA, GRC, and application portfolio management, and delivers an
integrated set of solutions that deliver operational excellence for organizations facing complex
integration issues with business and technology. The platform enables organizations to use
assessments, campaigns and surveys, and to base business-technology decisions on business
performance results expressed by a variety of business stakeholders.

Mega consistently integrates industry best practices in many aspects of its product offering.
One example is the Object Management Group's Meta Object Facility (OMG MoF 2)-compliant
repository that provides underlying support for the reporting and decision-making capabilities
by adding any object/relationship type to the metamodel and making it available to end users
for query and reporting. Another example is the rich out-of-the-box modeling capabilities. Both
demonstrate the rigor Mega applies to its product and to the company.

Cautions

Mega is a rigorously run organization with a strong management team and excellent resources
in many key roles. Its strategy on retaining resources and providing recognition and incentives
makes it a good candidate for acquisition.

Federated organizations can be handled using several methods in the Mega Suite. As a result,
potential customers must understand how they want to implement it in their organization, by
articulating specific use cases.

OpenText
OpenText (www.bps.opentext.com) offers OpenText ProVision for Enterprise Architecture.
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Strengths

The ProVision product is positioned primarily as a business architecture tool for delivering
business transformation, such as large ERP implementations, mergers and acquisitions (M&As),
and process excellence initiatives. Organizations intent on transformation with a strong
business architecture focus should consider ProVision.

OpenText has positioned ProVision as a strategic tool for organizations to approach their
enterprise information management strategy, helping to connect enterprise content
management (ECM), business process management (BPM) and customer experience
management (CXM).

Cautions

Since acquiring Metastorm in 2011, OpenText has made a strong effort to distance the product
from the EA discipline and focus it primarily on business transformation capabilities. Potential
customers are strongly encouraged to provide specific use cases to determine whether the
product can meet their needs.

Customers report some technical issues and insufficient guidance when using ProVision to
avoid setting up too many repositories or not taking advantage of all the capabilities of the
product.

QualiWare
QualiWare (www.qualiware.com) offers QualiWare Product Suite.
Strengths

QualiWare has continued its efforts to improve its product positioning and marketing, product
usability, and quality of visual tool output, which have resulted in a positive market reaction.

QualiWare has focused on extensive collaboration capabilities in the design of its offering.
Organizations requiring consensus building to ensure effective EA and decision making should
strongly consider including QualiWare on their shortlists.

Cautions

QualiWare has enjoyed considerable success in its Nordic-based region and has successfully
established a presence in many locations outside this area. Potential customers should ensure
they have adequate support from QualiWare to support their product implementations.

QualiWare has historically co-created industry-specific solutions with its clients and then
maintained ongoing support for these solutions. Prospective customers should ensure this
support continues to be in place and understand how enhancements will be made.

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SAP-Sybase
SAP (www.sap.com/solutions/technology/database/model-driven-architecture/index.epx) offers
SAP Sybase PowerDesigner EnterpriseArchitect.
Strengths

The SAP approach to EA sets it somewhat apart from the other vendors in this research. Its
focus is on data and information, resulting in an in-depth approach to information modeling and
architecture that is unsurpassed in the EA tool marketplace. Clients that need this functionality
are well-advised to look at this product, especially because of its integration with other EA
tools.

SAP Sybase PowerDesigner EnterpriseArchitect is fully integrated into the SAP family and
enjoys the same level of commitment, marketing and sales support as the rest of the SAP
products. SAP's EA consultants will use this product in their consulting engagements, which
illustrates an approach consistent with the "SAP runs SAP" marketing efforts.

Cautions

Although SAP has strong information architecture functionality, it may not provide the rich
functionality required for a mature EA team in terms of dashboards and visualizations that
include the other architecture viewpoints. Generating output from the tool to enable decision
making is not handled natively in a user-friendly manner. Data must be exported into a
spreadsheet or report writer tool and formatted as desired. Some "export to Excel" examples
are provided.

The benefits of SAP are primarily recognized through a specific configuration to meet clients'
needs. Potential buyers must be aware of this and plan for the time and money required to
achieve such a configuration.

Software AG (alfabet)
Software AG offers alfabet's product suite called planningIT (www.alfabet.com).
Strengths

Alfabet continued to grow and expand into the EA tool market by increasing sales and
becoming an attractive target for Software AG, which acquired alfabet in June 2013.

Alfabet focuses on providing Integrated IT Portfolio Analysis (IIPA) and contains all the EA
components and viewpoints to support that analysis.

Alfabet states it will continue to focus on product releases every six months and to support an
engaged and committed user community, which includes midsize organizations needing a
quick-start configuration.

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Cautions

Customers of alfabet, a strong individual player in the EA tool market, should understand how
the organization's expertise and experience will be integrated and positioned in the Software
AG product suite.

Some aspects of the customer experience decision analysis are accomplished outside the tool
functionality. Customers should know what decision analysis is included in the product.

Software AG (Aris)
Software AG (www.softwareag.com/ea) offers Aris.
Strengths

Software AG has complemented the Aris product with the Aris MashZone product to enable
information sharing with senior business stakeholders via dashboards.

Software AG is well-known for its long-standing, solid participation in the business process
analysis (BPA) market, and for its rich modeling and analysis capabilities. This makes it wellsuited for organizations that want to use the same tool for EA and BPA.

Software AG has understood the impact of the digital organization challenges and plans to
engage with business consultants to ensure its approach is more business-based in the future.

Software AG has acquired alfabet, which also participates in the EA tool market. The potential
synergy of these two offerings may provide the market with some interesting alternatives.

Cautions

Since the acquisition of alfabet in June 2013, customers should strive to understand how the
alfabet product will be positioned.

Some Software AG products can be challenging to use without the assistance of the company's
consulting practice. Potential customers should understand that implementing these complex
solutions likely will require consulting services, and should consider the cost and effort required.

Sparx Systems
Sparx Systems (www.sparxsystems.com) offers Enterprise Architect.
Strengths

Sparx Systems has a unique offering in this Magic Quadrant as a vendor that provides a lowcost product license for immediate online download.

Sparx Systems' product has broad EA capability and functionality that is commonly required by
software engineers (requirements management and requirements engineering) for delivering

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new applications. Customers have acquired Sparx for this reason, and supplement it with other
tools needed for more strategic decision-making capabilities.
Cautions

Sparx Systems is an Australian company, and as a result, its technical support comes primarily
from Australia. Therefore, response to a technical problem is usually provided by email, and it
may take several rounds of emails to resolve the problem if it is a complex one.

Sparx Systems has a limited number of sister companies in several regions of the world and
primarily focuses on training partners to help its user base understand how to use the product.
Potential customers should ensure there is sufficient training support available in their regions.

Troux
Troux (www.troux.com) offers Troux Enterprise Portfolio Management Suite.
Strengths

In addition to serving the traditional EA tool market, Troux has expanded its marketing to
include positioning the tool for what it calls "Enterprise Portfolio Management" to expand its
addressable market to other roles, including business leaders. This approach has led to some
initial success, with a significant increase in sales.

In response to providing support to a variety of stakeholder concerns, Troux recently updated

its product suite by adding a powerful Web-based analytic capability (Insight) in addition to its
integrated visual modeling client (Architect) and Web-based information portal (Navigate),
integrating modeling and enterprise portfolio management use cases. Troux has understood
that investment decisions in organizations are not made purely on the basis of strategy and are
now focusing more strongly on a portfolio analysis approach.

Troux has moved to align product strategy, product development and marketing under one
responsible manager. This approach has strengthened the company's ability to deliver an
integrated, whole product to the market. This effort, along with its renewed focus on expanding
its geographic coverage, has resulted in more global market coverage than previously.

Cautions

Customers should be aware that Troux uses the term "enterprise portfolio management"
instead of "enterprise architecture" to attract a target market other than traditional enterprise
architects.

Customers have remarked that there have been some technical problems with the SaaS
offering. Because this is a key part of Troux's go-to-market strategy, potential customers
should evaluate this offering carefully.

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Troux may be a candidate for acquisition, given its innovative thought leadership in the EA
discipline, and that it has been a consistent leader in the EA tool market with its attractive
product capabilities and growing global presence.

Vendors Added and Dropped

We review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes as markets
change. As a result of these adjustments, the mix of vendors in any Magic Quadrant or
MarketScope may change over time. A vendor's appearance in a Magic Quadrant or MarketScope
one year and not the next does not necessarily indicate that we have changed our opinion of that
vendor. It may be a reflection of a change in the market and, therefore, changed evaluation criteria,
or of a change of focus by that vendor.

Added
None.

Dropped
Future Tech Systems has been dropped as a result of not meeting the inclusion criteria for market
presence (subsidiary or official partner) in North America, Europe and the Asia/Pacific region, as well
as clients in two of these regions. As this market continues to evolve and mature, it is increasingly
important for these vendors to support global organizations.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

To be included in this Magic Quadrant, vendors must:

Have tools that are positioned to address the Gartner-defined EA tool marketplace and possess
the critical capabilities described in the Market Definition/Description section.

Have customer production deployments in at least two vertical industries.

Have a presence (office or official partner) in North America, Europe and the Asia/Pacific region.

Have customers in production for at least two of the three regions mentioned above.

Enable Gartner to acquire survey data from at least three users/customers not necessarily
provided by the vendor (during the customer survey period executed as part of the Magic
Quadrant research process) that demonstrate that the tool meets these criteria.

Have a substantial presence in this market. This will be determined by the number of active user
licenses and the vendor's client references that are: (1) using a current release of the product in
production, and (2) using the product to do EA as described in Gartner's definition of the EA
tool market.

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Evaluation Criteria
Ability to Execute
Vendors are evaluated on their Ability to Execute the ability to compete effectively, impact
revenue to a positive degree, and deliver solutions to clients that create vendor-client win-win
relationships.
Here are the Ability to Execute criteria:

Product/Service: This includes the core products/services offered by the vendors that
compete in this market. We looked in detail at 11 aspects of a vendor's EA product suite:

Repository/metamodel

Modeling

Decision analysis

Presentation

Administration

Configurability

Frameworks and standards

Technical

Interfaces

Usability

Differentiators

Overall Viability: An assessment of the vendor's financial health, the strength of its customer
base and its presence in the market. For large vendors (IBM, SAP-Sybase and Software AG),
we also evaluated the relevant business units and the likelihood that the vendors will continue
to invest in and sell their products.

Sales Execution/Pricing: The overall effectiveness of the sales channels and product pricing,
including the cost of training and consulting.

Market Responsiveness/Record: The ability to respond to changes in the market as customer

needs evolve and market dynamics change, recognizing the vendor's history of responsiveness.

Marketing Execution: The effectiveness of programs that communicate the organization's

message to the market to increase awareness of its products, and to establish a positive
identification with the product or brand and the organization among buyers.

Customer Experience: The customer's experience with the vendor and its products.

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Operations: The organization's ability to meet its goals and commitments, including the
vendor's technical support, training and consulting operations (see Table 1).

Table 1. Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria

Criteria

Weight

Product or Service

High

Overall Viability

High

Sales Execution/Pricing

Medium

Market Responsiveness/Record

Medium

Marketing Execution

High

Customer Experience

High

Operations

Medium

Source: Gartner (October 2013)

Completeness of Vision
Vendors are also evaluated on their Completeness of Vision their ability to articulate logical
statements about current and future market direction, innovation, customer needs and competitive
forces; how consistently they map their strategies and plans to their stated vision; and the
practicality of that vision. Ultimately, vendors are rated on their understanding of market forces and
their plans to exploit the market.
Here are the weighted Completeness of Vision criteria:

Market Understanding: The ability to understand and accurately forecast buyers' needs in the
EA environment, and to translate those needs into products and services.

Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages communicated consistently

throughout the organization and externalized through the website, advertising, customer
programs and positioning statements, consistent with the market understanding.

Sales Strategy: The strategy that uses the appropriate network of direct and indirect sales
channels, coupled with marketing, service and communication affiliates that extend the scope
and depth of market reach for selling products and services.

Offering (Product) Strategy: A vendor's approach to product development and delivery that
emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology and features as they map to users'
requirements.

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Business Model: The soundness and logic of a vendor's underlying business proposition.

Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to
meet the specific needs of individual industries.

Innovation: The direct, related, complementary and synergistic allocation of resources,

expertise or capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive purposes.

Geographic Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet
the specific needs of geographies outside its "home" region directly or through partners,
channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for those geographies and markets (see Table 2).

Table 2. Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria

Weighting

Market Understanding

High

Marketing Strategy

Medium

Sales Strategy

Medium

Offering (Product) Strategy

High

Business Model

Medium

Vertical/Industry Strategy

Medium

Innovation

High

Geographic Strategy

Medium

Source: Gartner (October 2013)

Quadrant Descriptions
Leaders
Leaders provide mature offerings that meet market demand, and demonstrate the vision necessary
to sustain their market position as requirements evolve. The hallmark of Leaders is that they focus
on and invest in their offerings to the point that they lead the market and can affect its overall
direction. As a result, Leaders can become the vendors to watch as you try to understand how new
offerings might evolve. Leaders typically possess a large, satisfied customer base (relative to the
size of the market) and enjoy high visibility within the market. Their size and financial strength
enable them to remain viable in a challenging economy. Leaders typically respond to a wide market
audience by supporting broad market requirements. However, they may fail to meet the specific
needs of vertical markets or other more specialized segments.

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In this Magic Quadrant, the Leaders have a broad range of capabilities to support EA, combined
with the ability to deliver these capabilities to a diverse group of stakeholders. Although each of the
Leaders has different strengths, they all provide good capabilities to assist the EA mission to
translate business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change. In addition, they have a clear
vision of the direction and maturation of the EA discipline.

Challengers
Challengers have a strong Ability to Execute, but may not have a plan that will maintain a strong
value proposition for new customers. Although Challengers typically have significant size and
financial resources, they may lack a strong vision, innovative ideas/plans or overall understanding of
market needs. In some cases, Challengers may offer products nearing the end of their lives that
dominate a large, but shrinking, segment. Challengers can become Leaders if their vision develops.
Large companies may fluctuate between the Challengers and Leaders quadrants as their product
cycles and market needs shift.

Visionaries
These vendors have shown a thorough understanding of the necessary attributes required in the
new definition of the EA tool marketplace. Visionaries align with Gartner's view of how a market will
evolve, but they have fewer proven capabilities to deliver against that vision. They may reflect a
competitive strategy for a smaller vendor such as selling an innovation ahead of mainstream
demand or a larger vendor trying to break out of a rut or differentiate itself. For vendors and
customers, Visionaries fall into the higher-risk/higher-reward category. They often introduce new
technology, services or business models, and may need to build financial strength, service and
support, as well as sales and distribution channels. Visionaries may become Challengers or
Leaders, depending on whether companies accept the new technology, or whether the vendors can
develop partnerships that complement their strengths. Visionaries sometimes are attractive
acquisition targets for Leaders or Challengers.

Niche Players
Vendors in the Niche Players quadrant tend to have strengths in numerous aspects of EA, but may
be relatively deficient in functional breadth, global presence, industry breadth or market focus.
However, they may also have expertise in a particular niche market, which actually makes them the
vendors of choice for that market. Niche Players do well in a segment of a market, or they have a
limited ability to innovate or outperform other vendors. This may be because they focus on a
functionality or geographic region, or because they are new entrants to the market. Alternatively,
they may be struggling to remain relevant in a market that is moving away from them. Niche Players
may have reasonably broad functionality, but with limited implementation and support capabilities,
and relatively limited customer bases. They have not yet established a strong vision for their
offerings. A Niche Player may be a perfect fit for your requirements. However, if the vendor goes
against the direction of the market even if you like what it offers then it may be a risky choice,
because its long-term viability will be threatened.

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Context
The EA tool market continues to incrementally evolve as EA teams, CIOs and tool providers grapple
with unique challenges. For EA teams, these challenges include the growing need to:

Present analyses, recommendations and scenarios to multiple stakeholders that require

different levels of detail and context setting

Support their analyses and recommendations with increasingly sophisticated forms of decision
analysis

Run and test a range of possible scenarios that describe alternative investment plans

Chief architects and CIOs face the additional challenge of demonstrating the business value that EA
efforts provide. EA tool providers are challenged to respond to a dynamic market that supports
enterprise architects in their effort to show results by delivering targeted business outcomes.
Against the backdrop of these market trends, this Magic Quadrant addresses the concerns of new,
intermediate and advanced EA practitioners regarding the use of tools to support their EA
programs. These concerns include the selection, adoption, implementation and subsequent use of
the tools to support needs that are specific to EA, and often to support complementary efforts, such
as planning, compliance, BPM, data management and portfolio management. Organizations
requiring integrated functionality across these areas should include integration/functional support
criteria in their vendor/product evaluations.
A Magic Quadrant reflects the scoring and weighting that have been performed by analysts. This
Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools reflects the positioning of a technology provider
and is not primarily an analysis of its product's functionality. Of the 15 evaluation criteria, only one
actually pertains to the product. The remaining 14 criteria evaluate the technology provider against
the definition of the EA market. Gartner recommends that clients:

Review the Magic Quadrant research to help narrow the list of the most likely technology
providers to meet the organization's requirements.

Use associated Gartner Recommended Reading on EA tools and the selection process.

Select a vendor/product using use cases and capabilities that meet their functional and
nonfunctional requirements.

This Magic Quadrant describes a diverse market, but EA teams must consider that the best vendor
for a given organization might be outside the Leaders quadrant. Niche problems may require niche
solutions. When selecting an EA tool, organizations should consider a range of criteria and weight
them according to their current and future needs. Given the continuing global economic uncertainty,
organizations should consider the viability of their preferred vendors. Additionally, organizations
should ensure that there is adequate support for a given tool in their geographic region.

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Key Requirements of Enterprise Architects

In 2013, our focus on reviewing products has remained on capabilities that support and assist an
EA team in its day-to-day activities. Some of these activities include modeling, future-state analysis,
road mapping, presentational aids, dashboard analysis and scenario planning.
Although an EA team is likely to start off using drawing tools, spreadsheets, and other office
productivity and content management tools to document and share the EA, this approach becomes
extremely difficult once artifacts required for complex decision making appear in multiple places or
have complex relationships. For example, representations of an application might appear on a
diagram depicting a server, a business process and the application's interfaces all on different
content management systems, spreadsheets or diagrams. Changes to the application might require
updates in all locations of this data, introducing additional complexity and opportunities for
inconsistency and inaccuracy.
Adoption of an EA tool, together with the discipline of providing the right processes and security to
keep it up-to-date, can help enterprises maintain all the artifacts in sync by designing and
implementing an environment that enables changes to be reflected across all perspectives or
viewpoints in the entire architecture. EA practitioners that contribute to business outcomes must
create enabling, operational, diagnostic, actionable and measurable deliverables (see "EA Stage
Planning: Frame EA Deliverables"). EA tools provide some of the diagnostic deliverables (decision
analysis) and actionable deliverables (road maps) to enable the organization to realize business
change.
Enterprise architects should realize that additional tools outside this market may be required to
support business outcomes. Organizations make investment decisions based on various criteria,
which may or may not be linked to strategy. Gartner research shows that 80% of organizations fail
to execute their strategies (see "Using Risk-Adjusted Value Management to Close the Strategy Gap
and Gain Competitive Advantage"). One reason is that many organizations treat strategy
development and strategy execution as two distinct processes. This approach leads to a gap in
understanding and a failure to reach desired goals i.e., organizations do not necessarily execute
what is strategically important. Gartner finds that application portfolio management and project
portfolio management are becoming more important and influential in the investment decisionmaking process. However, without the full EA perspective to support their functionality, those
recommendations are limited. At the same time, enterprise architects should be ready to
accommodate those decisions if they deviate from the strategic road maps that EA produces.
Enterprise architects must be ready to reflect these new decisions in their road maps at a moment's
notice.

Market Overview
Although there is a wide spread of vendors across the quadrants, vendors are primarily in the
Leaders and Niche Players quadrants. This is a reflection of the spread of functionality provided by
vendors and their business models. There has also been significant movement by several vendors;

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these moves demonstrate their understanding of how EA tools deliver targeted business outcomes
to their customers.

New Demands for EA Tools and Vendor Responses

Organizations are continuing to scrutinize their investments in technology, and often have an
increasingly difficult time determining how to plan their investments. Adoption of EA tools has
reflected the need to provide better management, analysis and communication capabilities to
demonstrate the value EA brings to an organization (see "CEO Survey 2012: Executive Summary
Report: The Year of Living Hesitantly").
The chief architect and EA team are not the only stakeholders benefiting from an EA tool. EA tool
vendors have responded to this demand, and most of the vendors reported continued revenue
growth in 2012. Those reporting product revenue increases said the increases ranged from 20% to
42% during 2012, compared with 2011.

Additional Focus Areas for EA Tools

Historically, many EA tools were used to do modeling. As the use of EA tools matured,
organizations implemented analytical techniques (enabled through modeling) to closely match the
analytical needs of enterprise architects. However, the functionality of tool capabilities has
continued to expand, particularly in areas that enable EA tools to support an array of associated
activities with high affinity to EA including task management, GRC, communication and
collaboration, and integrated IT portfolio analysis while maintaining a common repository. Several
vendors mentioned in this Magic Quadrant also participate in other markets.
Here is a summary of the EA tool vendors that participate in other Magic Quadrants:

Enterprise GRC platforms: Mega and Software AG (Aris) (see "Magic Quadrant for Enterprise
Governance, Risk and Compliance Platforms")

BPA tools: Casewise, IBM, Mega, OpenText, Software AG (Aris) and Sparx Systems

Integrated IT portfolio analysis: Software AG (alfabet) (see "Magic Quadrant for Integrated IT
Portfolio Analysis Applications")

Acquisitions
Software AG acquired alfabet in June 2013 subject to the German federal cartel office's antitrust
approval. It was subsequently approved by the German federal cartel's office on 24 June 2013. This
was a significant acquisition, as alfabet is a strong player in the EA tool market and recently
expanded its role in the IIPA market as well. Gartner clients should speak with a Gartner analyst to
find out the current status of a vendor if they are concerned about possible acquisitions, mergers or
other issues.
Additional research contribution and review: Chris Wilson.

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Gartner Recommended Reading

Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.
"How Gartner Evaluates Vendors and Markets in Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes"
"Market Drives Gartner to Redefine the Enterprise Architecture Tool Marketplace"
"Gartner Assessment of Enterprise Architecture Tool Capabilities"
"Toolkit: Use Cases for EA Tools That Deliver Business Value"
"Enterprise Architecture Tools Are Positioned to Deliver Business Value"
Evidence
1

Extensive research based on the Gartner methodology approach was conducted on the EA tool
marketplace to produce this Magic Quadrant. Information was acquired and analyzed for 14
vendors, including:

Vendor-specific responses to all 15 evaluation criteria that define the Magic Quadrant

Vendor-specific responses to 11 tool capabilities, including tool differentiators in this

marketplace

Vendor briefings

Vendor presentation of tools that support two common use cases, which address the use of the
tool in performing complex decision analysis and providing information back to key
stakeholders about strategic road maps

At least three customer responses per vendor to a survey, including 18 questions on their use
and opinions of vendor tools

Client inquiries and comments received by Gartner during the past year regarding any of the
tools and the EA tool marketplace in general

During the past year, Gartner conducted 232 inquiries with Gartner clients about their challenges
needing EA tool support, EA tool usage and functionality. Gartner conducted more than 50 face-toface discussions with clients and vendors. These client inquiries represented a broad cross section
of organizations of every size worldwide. Gartner had more than 14 in-depth briefings with EA
vendors.

Evaluation Criteria Definitions

Ability to Execute
Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor for the defined
market. This includes current product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills

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and so on, whether offered natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships as

defined in the market definition and detailed in the subcriteria.
Overall Viability: Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial
health, the financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood that
the individual business unit will continue investing in the product, will continue offering
the product and will advance the state of the art within the organization's portfolio of
products.
Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor's capabilities in all presales activities and the
structure that supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation,
presales support, and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel.
Market Responsiveness/Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and
achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer
needs evolve and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor's
history of responsiveness.
Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed
to deliver the organization's message to influence the market, promote the brand and
business, increase awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification
with the product/brand and organization in the minds of buyers. This "mind share" can
be driven by a combination of publicity, promotional initiatives, thought leadership,
word of mouth and sales activities.
Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable
clients to be successful with the products evaluated. Specifically, this includes the ways
customers receive technical support or account support. This can also include ancillary
tools, customer support programs (and the quality thereof), availability of user groups,
service-level agreements and so on.
Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factors
include the quality of the organizational structure, including skills, experiences,
programs, systems and other vehicles that enable the organization to operate
effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis.
Completeness of Vision
Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to understand buyers' wants and needs
and to translate those into products and services. Vendors that show the highest
degree of vision listen to and understand buyers' wants and needs, and can shape or
enhance those with their added vision.
Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently
communicated throughout the organization and externalized through the website,
advertising, customer programs and positioning statements.

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Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling products that uses the appropriate network of
direct and indirect sales, marketing, service, and communication affiliates that extend
the scope and depth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the
customer base.
Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor's approach to product development and
delivery that emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature sets as
they map to current and future requirements.
Business Model: The soundness and logic of the vendor's underlying business
proposition.
Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and
offerings to meet the specific needs of individual market segments, including vertical
markets.
Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources,
expertise or capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive purposes.
Geographic Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to
meet the specific needs of geographies outside the "home" or native geography, either
directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for that
geography and market.

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