Bizzdesign Horizzon

We usually go for ArchiMate, and using that language, we do the business process engineering. We also create a capability map and heat map there. We also do the application portfolio management there.

The business process one is the most important one because in one of my last experiences, we had more than 700 business processes and we need to optimize them as time passes because they become obsolete. Highlighting the current flows, and then creating the target flows, and then having the discrepancies highlighted, and then the removal of those discrepancies by minimizing the hops of APIs is critical. In that sense, BiZZdesign HoriZZon  really helped us a lot.

The heat map is one of the best features that BiZZdesign HoriZZon  offers.

It's really valuable because if I am driving an architecture for a big financial institution which has HR, which has IT, which has finance, accounting, wealth, treasury, et cetera, et cetera, capital markets. In that sense, the heat map highlights for me the applications and the business portfolios that are being catered by those applications in that specific domain. This really helps a lot in creating banking as a landscape or bank on a page.

Having a master ERP , a capability management tool, a strategy management tool, or an enterprise architecture tool to highlight where the direction of the organization is as per TOGAF, implementing the ADM cycle, going from the vision to the stakeholder management and then going down distributing those opportunities into projects, and then doing a proper governance, is essential. BiZZdesign HoriZZon does all of the work that is required. Establishing the milestones and then achieving them is really helpful using BiZZdesign HoriZZon.

Decision-making has absolutely improved. I have created a scoring table to have the KPIs being achieved that this application is scoring this much or not, what is the turnaround time, what is the efficiency rate, what is the ratio to the job fulfillment, et cetera, et cetera. It's helping me right now in doing that.

The UI/UX of BiZZdesign HoriZZon can be improved. The capabilities that it offers are great.

There should be a good drag-and-drop feature. There is currently a feature of drag-and-drop, but that's not very efficient. There should also be an integration of an AI library that can help in getting the reference models from the internet and can compare it on the runtime. The third improvement which I'm going to recommend is having a good UI/UX.

The UI/UX is an area for improvement. The intelligent option that is going to concatenate directly the connections to the reference models and libraries present on the internet would be beneficial. A better response rate would also help. The frame, the labeling, the text, everything, they are scattered. They are not very well designed, according to me.

There can be a containerization model. You can have the reference models being captured in your different library. Whenever a customer comes to you with that feature enabling request, you can enable that feature and you can give them the different 700, 600 options that these are the closest options in our local LLM without sharing their data to the internet. The AI and the governance can be done in a much better way.

I have been using BiZZdesign HoriZZon for the last six years.

This is a very fundamental question in getting things up and running. All of the banks, and all of the agencies that are my clients, they are really happy with the design, from the results provided by it, and 100% they are relying on the results because they have been using it for years now. I know organizations that are relying totally on it. The cost that we spend on each application procurement, the cost that we spend on the workdays or the work breakdown for each application development at the custom cycle, the procurement of things, the capability model, the integration model, the application landscape, they are all very well used by the organization and the decision-makers.

Most of them in Saudi and UAE have on-premises, but two of my clients, one is a bank and one is a tax agency, they are using the hybrid cloud model.

They purchased BiZZdesign HoriZZon through a local agency called Jodain.

I would be recommending using the BPM  function. I would be recommending using the application portfolio function. I would be recommending that having been doing in the past, they should practice all of the use cases as per ArchiMate. I think they will be good to go. My overall rating for this product is 7 out of 10.

Hybrid Cloud

Amazon Web Services  (AWS )

Our main use case for BiZZdesign HoriZZon  is to maximize our architecture end-to-end. We have many approaches to make architectural drawings and to try and link these to our CMDB , and our architecture was a bit of a mess. So what we try to do here is to get rid of Draw.io, to get rid of creating in Excel and Word and Visio , and to try and put everything into one tool, to have our whole business capabilities shown in one place where I can click and I can open up and I can see the integrations, and I can see which applications are connected to each other. I can see what integrations are connected, what they are doing, who owns them, who's responsible, when the next update is available, etc. So for me, everything is in one place instead of being on SharePoint  and in 100 different places.

We have daily meetings within the business to understand how things are working; when we bring a new project out or have a new application, I need to document that application. I need to understand who is using it, who is owning it, who is responsible for any changes, and what the integrations within that application are. Here , I can draw a box, I can put a user, an endpoint within that box, I can put the data object; for example, an application like Workday  has finance, procurement, and an HCM module. I can break down the specific domains and objects within that application and then help to build that application outwards. If someone logs in and doesn't know the application, they can make one click to open another screen or click on that integration, which tells them all the information about that integration. Everything is in one place, linked to our CMDB , which contains all information about who owns it, who is the business manager responsible for it, who is the support team, and everything is there, including when it should be end of life or when it needs an upgrade or how much it costs and how much the licenses are. Everything is in one place, making our life within the business a lot easier without having to go to multiple departments and worrying about people on vacation.

The best features that BiZZdesign HoriZZon  offers mainly include the ability to drill down into the application, to put the metrics within a specific application, and to list the number of integrations or the integration touchpoints. I can put in who owns the application and have everything in a single place. It benefits me when I need to know who pays the bill for this application or what the annual cost of licenses is because I can access everything within a few seconds once I log into the application. Everything being in one place really benefits me from an architectural perspective and also benefits the architectural, enterprise architecture team and the business.

I find ArchiMate to be a very good tool within BiZZdesign HoriZZon that helps us build end-to-end workflows and drill into the application. It is not just an application where you draw boxes and a few lines to data objects, but it also allows you to drill down and make sequence diagrams to show end-to-end workflows. I am able to have a single box on the screen, and when I click on it to say "Welcome to WHO," I have a list of my enterprise architecture, data architecture, and infrastructure architecture. I can click on and see my architectural principles and my business principles, allowing me to drill down through other features and understand everything about our architectural landscape and the applications required within that landscape from the front page.

BiZZdesign HoriZZon is a great tool, but it has limitations. It is not really one-to-one for common applications like Visio , for example, and there are workarounds. We have written many workarounds to translate Visio into Excel and Excel into Visio for simple drawings, whereby we have thousands of drawings in our SharePoint  applications that are written in Visio and we need those to be moved across. Instead of rewriting them, we have found ways to manipulate the way it is to move everything across. So, for me, it is a great tool that helps me and the business.

I see the online version as more popular than the downloadable version. I think better integrations to other tools, moving architecture from Visio and Enterprise Architect, could be made easier for migration into BiZZdesign HoriZZon. It is great if you do not have architecture tools, but if you are moving across from another, having everything in Visio requires a lot of work to recreate everything step-by-step because it may not be in the same format as BiZZdesign HoriZZon.

I rate it a nine because it is a great tool, but the user-friendliness regarding moving things across is a bit of a letdown. From a general perspective of the tool itself and what it does, it is second to none; I cannot fault the tool, only the process of not having the flexibility to allow migrations from other tools without help from someone in the organization.

I have been an architect or I have been within IT for the last 30 years.

From my experience, BiZZdesign HoriZZon is stable, and I have not encountered any problems with it.

I find BiZZdesign HoriZZon to be scalable for our needs, although I have not tested its limits beyond what I require at the moment.

Customer support has been great; issues we have encountered have typically been resolved within an hour, with responsive communications from the customer support team about fixes and workarounds.

I would rate customer support a perfect ten out of ten since any issues that arise have been addressed quickly, and solutions or timelines for fixes are communicated effectively.

As a consultant, I have used various solutions in the past, including Sparks, Visio, and ARIS  from Software AG. My current need led me to adopt BiZZdesign HoriZZon after recommendations from within the United Nations, starting from scratch as we had nothing before.

I see a return on investment because it prevents people from creating or building new applications; BiZZdesign HoriZZon facilitates workflows. If workflows and integrations are present, they save the organization money by demonstrating what is already available, thus reducing the need to create duplications.

I did not directly handle the pricing, setup cost, and licensing details as it is managed from a government perspective. WHO has recently cut back, leading us to a basic service model with a smaller number of read-only licenses. From a cost perspective, it still seems quite high, but I do not primarily deal with those aspects.

Prior to selecting BiZZdesign HoriZZon, we did send out an RFP to other competitors, but this tool was the one we had in mind due to its recommendations within the United Nations, following the process required.

BiZZdesign HoriZZon is deployed as a SaaS solution in the public cloud, and while there are users with the downloaded version on their machines, it is not the old-fashioned data center type. I sign in via a data center located in Frankfurt, but whether it is public or private, I am not sure.

BiZZdesign HoriZZon is predominantly hosted on AWS , and we log in to it as a SaaS service on AWS , which is also based in Frankfurt.

We did not purchase BiZZdesign HoriZZon through the AWS Marketplace ; instead, we bought it through the UN Marketplace. Other people within the UN were using it, and we received preferential rates by utilizing a tool already proven within the United Nations.

We build all regulatory and compliance principles within BiZZdesign HoriZZon. We have pages for regulations and compliance, listing compliance within and linking each regulation to the application. Everything is linked to understand what can be done or how the application complies. In Europe, we adhere to GDPR regulations, which help us mask sensitive data within the organization, and for audits, everything is displayed and described within BiZZdesign HoriZZon, aiding users in understanding their limitations for specific applications or integrations.

Collaboration between different teams is limited within our organization because we have a limited user base, with around 20 main applications and each application owner having access to BiZZdesign HoriZZon to create their own architectural models. While collaboration exists between core applications, challenges arise when people leave or retire since applications may not be handed over appropriately.

BiZZdesign HoriZZon helps us really understand existing IT systems; most have been replaced or integrated into the new landscape. It provides better visibility on what applications are owned by specific business units, which is especially beneficial during audits. The tool allows users to search for applications and confirm their existence, ensuring clarity on what is being used.

We utilize ArchiMate for BPM , allowing business owners to build end-to-end workflows, which aids our support teams in recognizing blockages in different business processes and integrations. It has substantially aided us from a support perspective by limiting downtime, where previously everything was documented and less accessible.

BiZZdesign HoriZZon allows us to align IT and business strategy effectively. It helps us understand what applications are out there and what functionality they have, so if someone wants to bring in a new application or requirement, they can search and find that the data already exists or can be integrated, saving both time and resources.

We do not use BiZZdesign HoriZZon for change management; we have specific tools for that. From a versioning perspective, we are able to list the versions of applications, but it is typically not for change management, although it keeps our architectural modeling up to date with the latest architectural drawings.

I think it makes life easier within the organization; everything is in one place, allowing people to have read-only access to understand certain integrations or parts of the business. They can go in and see if an integration or application is available, which makes life a lot easier. People do not have to create a new application or separate integrations; they can pick something out of the catalog and utilize something already there by understanding who the owner of that integration or application is.

It is difficult to distinguish metrics here, but I would say there have been a lot of cost savings involved by using the tool to better identify what we have within our architectural landscape. In the past, someone would say they need a small application that can do this and they need an integration, and they would put an RFP out, leading to high costs. Now they can go in up front and see the integration with the data is there and the application can do what they need. This saves a lot of money for the future and is very important from an organizational perspective.

I see BiZZdesign HoriZZon as a good tool for the future and a market leader among other tools. Many architectural tools have failed to keep up with updates, but BiZZdesign continues to demonstrate how things should be progressing; I find it highly scalable and recommend it.

I would give BiZZdesign HoriZZon a nine out of ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My main use case for BiZZdesign HoriZZon  is enterprise architecture and solution architecture.

A quick specific example of how I use it for enterprise or solution architecture is creating an overview of processes using business process notation language.

I also handle showing what technology is used in doing business processes and the supporting technology, and seeing the consequences of technology choices coming ahead, such as integrations, typical data we need to have available, and the quality of data and so forth.

In my opinion, the best features BiZZdesign HoriZZon  offers include the ability to analyze your IT infrastructure's relationship to your business, seeing how everything is connected with everything, and figuring out ways ahead how you can change your setup.

The analysis in BiZZdesign HoriZZon works for me through a coloring view that is very simple and straightforward, which doesn't feel too analytical, but is still very powerful. It shows how different applications support the same process and forces the user, for instance, to use multiple applications at the same time.

I haven't observed a significant positive impact of BiZZdesign HoriZZon on my organization, and it's difficult to point that out.

One improvement I see for BiZZdesign HoriZZon is the management of large quantities of data, which could be improved. There could be a bit more flexibility on the metamodel, having some ability to use the same object to depict different things. The third thing would be an easier way of hiding ArchiMate modeling language to translate it to something more abstract and business-minded in presentation of views and diagrams.

I think that BiZZdesign is on point when it comes to usability as a modeling tool and from an enterprise architecture tool, but engaging business users with easier usability through an easier interface would be beneficial. However, I understand that Horizon, the portal, is what they are doing, and I recognize that is the business for the future. Therefore, I cannot say that they need to improve that, other than what they are already doing.

I do not think there are any other improvements needed for BiZZdesign HoriZZon that I haven't mentioned.

I have been working in my current field for nine years.

In my experience, BiZZdesign HoriZZon is very stable.

Regarding scalability, it has met my needs as my organization has grown, aside from issues on data management and the volumes of data.

The customer support has been very good, providing day-by-day feedback on both their support sites and directly with consultants assigned at various points.

I previously used a different solution, called Enterprise One, or True, and we also used Sparx Enterprise Architect by Systems Enterprise Architecture. We switched because we wanted a consolidated solution to gather enterprise architecture data together in a joint solution and manage it contained, rather than having separate repositories and distributed information.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is a bit of an expensive tool, but we think we get the value in return. The licensing is also a bit static; they could perhaps have more modularity in the usage case in the setup of license types.

Before choosing BiZZdesign HoriZZon, we evaluated other options, including Ardoq , Abacus Systems, and a small Danish vendor, in a public procurement where we had five vendors submitting proposals. Ultimately, we chose BiZZdesign HoriZZon.

The advice I would give to others looking into using BiZZdesign HoriZZon is first to clarify what they plan to use enterprise architecture for before purchasing a solution. They need to determine whether they will use classical enterprise architecture such as ArchiMate modeling, or adopt a data-driven perspective, or something else entirely. I would rate this product an overall 8.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services  (AWS )