Bizzdesign Horizzon

The typical use case with BiZZdesign HoriZZon  is basically for enterprise architecture and also for business process modeling.

The most valuable features of BiZZdesign HoriZZon  include the diagrammatic representation of BPMN models, which I find good for modeling, and things such as capability maps. It allows for collaboration as if I work on something, someone else can pick up on it too.

Regarding ROI from BiZZdesign HoriZZon, it does what it's supposed to do, mapping capabilities and interacting with users effectively. The benefits are present in the tool, but it's also about user adoption within the company.

There is room for improvement in BiZZdesign HoriZZon. It's quite robust and has good online forums where people discuss it, though maybe the interface can improve, but I don't want to criticize it since I don't have comparisons of other tools. It takes a long time to learn and understand, which is a learning curve you have to go through, but once you know how it works, it's very nice to work with.

My experience with BiZZdesign HoriZZon spans approximately three to four years.

The stability of BiZZdesign HoriZZon rates at a 9 since it's very stable, although we haven't really strained it under very large landscapes that might test big designs.

The scalability of BiZZdesign HoriZZon rates quite highly at a 9 if not a 10, as for our use case with a small team, it was sufficient usage and any additional resources would find it easier to use.

The technical support from the vendor of BiZZdesign HoriZZon has extensive documentation, and I rate it a 9 because we had substantial initial guidance and online forums where people discuss it.

Positive

The initial setup of BiZZdesign HoriZZon was straightforward for me because when we got it, it was already set up. I wasn't involved in that portion, and all I had to do was get access and start to work on the tool itself. Once you start using it, you have to really know what you want to achieve, but it's quite a very good tool for business process and enterprise architecture.

I'm talking about several tools on business solution designs, as there are many calls and I've worked with several tools in this area.

I am employed with a company that has a license for BiZZdesign HoriZZon, so you can say a partner or a user, and if you buy the license, you become a partner.

I'm not involved in the pricing of BiZZdesign HoriZZon as it was bought by the organization.

Based on my experience with BiZZdesign HoriZZon, which I rate as 8 out of 10, I definitely recommend it, but I think it would be beneficial if there were opportunities to trial it before purchase, as it is robust and comparable to other tools I've worked with.

I used BiZZdesign HoriZZon  at two organizations. At Manchester Metropolitan University, I used it with a small team for architectural modeling of the student record system. We modeled teams, process objects, and their interactions with applications. We also used it to model a gradual rollout with plateaus showing migration over time. At the BBC, I used it to model software services for publishing content online. I showed key model views to senior stakeholders using Horizon, allowing them to modify and score applications and services.

There's always room for improvement. When I finished using it over a year ago, I discussed implementing C4 notation with BiZZdesign HoriZZon .They've likely done this now, but I haven't seen it. Setting up interactive views for stakeholders to score services was a bit difficult.

I have been using the product quite a lot. 

I don't recall any stability issues or bugs. The tool has a fully version-controlled data storage system that saves work continuously.

Scalability is great - it's one of the product's biggest benefits. Multiple team members can simultaneously contribute to the same model without overwriting each other's work.

I didn't contact the tool's technical support for problems, but I did contact them for guidance. They're very open and helpful. I could easily get in touch to ask how to do things, and they'd respond with video calls, screen sharing, and walk-throughs. This was especially useful for scripting functionality, which is powerful but not well-documented. We called them several times for proactive help, not to solve problems retrospectively.

We were customers and bought licenses from them. We used their remote instance initially but upgraded to the on-device version due to lag. For pricing, we paid about £1200 a year per seat for the client installation at an educational rate but that was a long time ago. I'm not sure about commercial rates. I managed to get a free evaluation copy at BBC since it was for evaluation purposes. 

It's not easy for anyone to use without training. When we purchased licenses, we bought a week's training. The solution also offers consulting and training services, which is helpful. 

I would recommend the tool to others. I currently work for the British government and would love to use it here. I'd happily recommend it to anyone seeking an enterprise architecture tool, particularly those who like using different modeling notations that can interact with each other and for teams that could grow over time.

Key attributes include scalability and a unique feature that offers a window into the models for senior stakeholders without requiring installation on their machines. These are significant benefits of the product.

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten. 

I use the solution in my company for all sorts of things, like enterprise and solution architecture. As part of our design process, BiZZdesign HoriZZon  is used for road mapping. We also use it for project governance, so all the project designs we do are subject to governance and are done using BiZZdesign. THe quality data from Bizzdesign is then fed into our CMDB , in order to keep the data synchronised across the two tools. We also import operational data from the CMDB  back into Bizzdesign, and use this to enable us to check that the required changes to the CMDB have been carried out correctly.

The tool's most valuable feature is that its collaboration part is very good. The way it supports multiple users working together is very good. I appreciate the use of standards in the tool. The tool is based on standards, which is very useful. I find extending and customizing the tool easy, which is very useful for us.

The ability to generate charts and deal with a use case involving Kibana was quite difficult. We don't use the chart functionality much, and I think that is quite problematic at the moment. We have made some design decisions with the tool, but I don't want to get too technical. The way the tool deals with the built-in way of creating charts with Kibana is quite difficult to use, so we don't use that, which is a problem. We have a problem with some of the visualization parts, as they are very hard to use.

I would like to be able to update data from the built-in scripting, irrespective of how that data is put into BiZZdesign. Right now, that is very difficult to do. They have a number of ways to store data. For example, in an application, there are a number of ways of storing data, and it is very difficult to update, use, and store what the product refers to as data blocks from all sorts of applications. I would like to see if I can split or instead put all the data for our business into one database. I would be able to split across multiple databases and have them linked together. I think that would make things easy. We don't have to put everything in one place. It is not so much trying to protect ourselves from risks. It is just that you have everything in one space, and then when you try to open that repository, it is very slow sometimes. Make  it a lot more manageable if we can break it into smaller pieces but still link them, as that would make things easier and make things run a lot faster.

I have been using BiZZdesign HoriZZon  for six years.

It is a very stable solution. The back-end server side is incredibly stable, but the client side does crash. Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

When it comes to the tool, I think it is very easy to adapt. There are some issues, but we didn't find it difficult to do it.

We don't need the large infrastructure because everything is hosted by BiZZdesign.

In my company, there are around 300 users of the tool.

My company plans to increase the usage of the tool in the future.

Many of our company's core processes rely upon the tool. We process documentations, and all of our architecture information is stored in the tool. The tool is used in many parts of the organization and within the data center.

I have communicated a lot with the technical support team for the solution. The technical support team is very supportive, and they do a lot of digging to make sure that we get sorted out. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

I have used a tool from an Australian company called Sparx Enterprise Architect. Another tool that I have used extensively, but not recently, was a tool owned by a company called CACI, which is called MooD.

I decided to use BiZZdesign HoriZZon because I had used MooD with one employer. I used  Sparx Enterprise Architect with a different employer. I didn't choose any of the tools I work with in any way. I used the tools offered by my employer.

If one is difficult and ten is easy to set up, I rate the product's initial setup phase as a ten out of ten.

The product's setup phase has been very easy.

The solution's setup phase has been very straightforward, and I didn't have any issues with it. The one thing is that in terms of the setup features, the tool integrates with a dataset called Technopedia, which is owned by a company called Flexera. It enables you to have a database of all the IT products that you can buy. I can say this application runs on this version of all Windows. The issue is that, apparently, every customer wants such an integration to be done, but it takes six to eight weeks to make it happen. It is puzzling to me why, in this day and age, you have to wait six weeks to turn on a switch. It should be simple. It is not that big of a deal as we managed it, and it is running fine now.

The solution can be deployed on a hybrid cloud model. The client-server part typically runs on our laptops. Although sometimes we also use the SaaS client, most of us use it on our laptops, along with the repository and the web host by BiZZdesign, but the client server part takes an hour.

It did not take time to deploy the tool. It was done in a day or something.

The deployment process is something that I distinguish between the client and the server. We don't deploy the server part. To deploy the client, we typically package it. There are various technologies you can use to push and use that automatically. We could use SCCM, but we don't just ask users to download it because we don't have admin rights on our laptops. We package it ourselves using the base product from BiZZdesign. We take BiZZdesign Enterprise Studio product, package it, and then deploy it to all of our desktops and laptops that need it.

On the client side, one person is typically involved in the deployment process to package the tool.

If one is very cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product price as a seven out of ten. The tool's price is justified. There are three different licenses, namely the designer, contributor, and consumer. I think the designer license is a little expensive.

My current employer also evaluated iServer  and Alfabet, before deciding in the end to select Bizzdesign. I think that was a good choice, it fits very well into our environment.

Speaking about BiZZdesign HoriZZon's most beneficial part for risk management tasks, I would say that its ability to link risks to things affected by those risks is good. Risks don't just exist on their own. A risk is a risk to something, like an application, or to a process, and so on. The tool's key feature is its ability to see risks in the proper context and, therefore, drive behavior by letting us know what is affected by risk and what can be done rather than just seeing the risk as a standalone aspect.

Speaking about BiZZdesign HoriZZon's strategy and portfolio management features of the solution have impacted our organization; I would say that there are particular features built into the product. We have not really used the tool's built-in portfolio management features because we have our own way of doing it. With the tool, being able to understand what applications do and also record relevant information to be able to say which apps are needed to keep or get rid of are areas that can be managed by the tool. We are not using the built-in features of the product. We are using our own way of using the tool, but we are still using the base product.

I think we have not used BiZZdesign HoriZZon to support compliance with industry regulations.

There is the basic product, and then you have enhancements that my team provides on top of that. We maintain the product with help from the vendor. We maintain the tool, but the base product is something we don't maintain, as we don't. have the vendor to help us with it.

My suggestion would not be specific to BiZZdesign but common introductions. You can do anything with the tool, but you would have to be focused on doing something well with it or just dump stuff in and then find it. The data in the usual systems is never going to be those things you would want to create in BiZZdesign, as some of the things you would want for yourself would be elsewhere. The tool can help in mastering traffic., and understanding where they come from in the first place.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.