System Architect®

Get a holistic view of your enterprise and ensure it continually evolves to meet changing needs.

UNICOM System Architect is a market-leading enterprise architecture tool that enables you to build and automatically generate data-driven views of your organization's enterprise architecture.

This includes your organization's strategy, business architecture, operational architecture, data, application landscape, supporting systems, technologies, and infrastructure. Together, these views form a mosaic that delivers the insight and analytics necessary to describe current and future states of the enterprise along with interdependencies, risks, life cycles, and standards.

From that you can “ask the architecture questions” and know how good the answers are based on viewing the health of the architecture itself, what it’s missing, how old it is, where its sources of record lie, and who made changes to the architecture and when.

I've used 5 other tools and none of them had the capabilities of System Architect.

Customer quote Gartner's Peer Insights program

Empowered with this knowledge, your executives, decision makers, and managers can quickly and more effectively plan initiatives for improvement, due to a more thorough understanding of the reward, impact, roadmap, and risk of changes. You gain visibility of planned initiatives from the business through operations, solution architecture development, release management, and deployment (DevOps).

With System Architect you can:

Easily customize the metamodel of industry standard frameworks to match sources of record
Automatically import those sources of record to quickly build a working enterprise architecture that you can ask questions of, and understand how good the answers are.
Build capability-driven enterprise architectures
- Create a line of sight from strategies to key capabilities to systems and technologies supporting them.
- Take advantage of disruptive technologies: understand where to make use of Artificial Intelligence in your organization, and plan and execute a cloud operating model.
- Use industry-standard frameworks and patterns.
- Create roadmaps of business transformation.
- Produce dashboards to gain clear understanding of the big picture.
Perform business process analysis with simulation and optimization.
Get a handle on your data – its origin, how it is used and transformed through your organization, and how good it is. Perform master data management.
Build operational and system architectures with defense architecture frameworks.
Use market-leading support for TOGAF, ArchiMate, DoDAF 2, UAF, NAF, and MODAF.
Design solution architectures using Model Based Systems Engineering methods with the latest sysML and UML specifications.
Build architectures using the Technology Business Model (TBM) or Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF 2).
Integrate with UNICOM Focal Point for portfolio management.
Reverse-engineer and analyze ERP systems such as Salesforce.com and SAP.
Allow each user to create custom dashboards of the enterprise architecture in System Architect XT, the web client.

UNICOM provides a range of flexible instructor-led training classes for System Architect. Choose from in-person sessions at our training facility at UNICOM Technology Park (UTP) in Chantilly, Virginia, convenient virtual training, or on-site training at your location.

Core features

Gain a deeper understanding of your enterprise architecture and plan for improvements, quickly and easily.

TOGAF

UAF, DoDAF 2 & NAF

MBSE

BPMN 2.0

sysML & UML

Conceptual, logical, and physical data modeling

Master Data Management with data cataloging and data flows

Brainstorming and ideas capture

Customer journey maps and value streams for SAFe

Balanced scorecards, capability and strategy maps

Built-in SQL reporting system

Personalized dashboards

Real-time multi-user repository on SQL Server

Market-leading customizable metamodel

Integration with Business Intelligence products

Capabilities

Gain a deeper understanding of your enterprise architecture and plan for improvements, quickly and easily.

Explore capabilities

Architecting

Architect the enterprise with a data-driven approach using industry-recognized frameworks and methods.

Patterns

Reuse industry standards such as FEAF 2.0, TM Forum Frameworx, APQC, BIAN and SCOR.

Analysis

Enterprise architecture diagrams and analysis.

Simulation

Profile, calculate and optimize patterns, profiles and workflows.

Harvest information

Automatically harvest information from disparate sources of record.

Repository

Use System Architect's robust EA repository.

Metamodel

Capture corporate information using the most flexible, customizable metamodel on the market.

ERP analysis

Reverse engineer and analyze Salesforce.com, SAP, Siebel, JD Edwards, or Peoplesoft.

Export information

Export information to corporate intelligence portals.

Integrations

Use REST, OSLC, and VBA to integrate the EA with other tooling or sources of record.

Reporting and analytics

Analyze your enterprise architecture and annotate it with analytics. Or build birds-eye Explorer views.

Web interface

Access/edit your enterprise architecture information and diagrams in a web browser with SA XT.

Enterprise architecture management

Use robust features to manage your entire enterprise architecture.

Learn about enterprise architecture.

Access control

Set up appropriate access rights for users and groups of users.

Add-ins

Additional capabilities to suit your enterprise architecture needs.

Explore add-ins

DoDAF and UAF

Architect and visualize your infrastructure approach using the Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF 2) and the new Unified Architecture Framework (UAF).

ArchiMate

Use the popular common language to describe, analyze, and visualize the relationships among your organization's business domains in an unambiguous way.

NAF

Develop your enterprise and systems architectures using the NATO Architecture Framework.

FEAF

Integrate strategic, business and technology management using the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework.

Learn about FEAF.

System Architect XT

Open up access to your enterprise architecture repository information to a wider audience via a web browser.

System Architect Publisher

Publish websites based on SQL-based queries of the repository using System Architect's reporting language.

System Architect Simulator

Simulate and optimize your process flows and calculate costs, risks and failure rates.

Learn about BPA and simulation.

System Architect ERP

Reverse engineer, examine, and selectively import ERP table structures into a logical data model.

Lean about ERP management.

Enterprise Architecture

Additional capabilities to suit your enterprise architecture needs.

Explore enterprise architecture

Build strategy and capability maps

Align new technology investments with the business and create line-of-sight views from strategy to capability.

Use a fully-featured web client

Use the System Architect XT web client to build and edit models of your enterprise architecture.

Deploy industry-standard frameworks, patterns, and methods

Use frameworks such as TOGAF, ArchiMate, DoDAF 2, UAF, or NAF, and adjust them to suit your needs.

Capture sources of record and customize the metamodel

Easily create new definitions, diagrams, symbols, and relationship types with model-centric rules.

Utilize a data-centric or model-based approach

Create a single source of the truth, harvesting information from disparate sources of record.

Use enterprise architecture to execute an Artificial Intelligence strategy

Strategically and tactically plan which processes can be made more efficient through AI, and execute those initiatives.

Meticulously perform master data management

Establish an unambiguous vocabulary of the data being worked on and created by the applications that the solution teams are developing.

Analyze Salesforce.com, SAP, and other ERP systems

Reverse engineer ERP systems to analyze their data model tables, and their related application components and processes.

Generate roadmaps of future state capabilities and technologies

Create forward-looking views of applications and technologies to understand rationalization and upgrades to guide your budgeting process.

Build and compare current state and future state architectures

Compare future-state architecture alternatives side-by-side, selectively merge contents, and baseline a desired future-state.

Cause-effect and landscape heatmap analysis

Quickly get a 50,000-foot view of the architecture through System Architect's unique network- and landscape-style explorer diagrams.

Perform application portfolio analysis with ease

Utilize out-of-box analytics to visualize portfolio analysis or write your own analytics on the fly in seconds.

Learn about EA and portfolio management.

Integrate to solution design, requirements, and change management

Using OSLC standards, create traceability links between your architecture and related aspects of the enterprise information.

Defense frameworks

Using DoDAF 2, NAF 3, or MODAF 1.2, build capability-driven architectures that capture operational architecture, system-of-systems design, and integration within and across organizations.

Explore defense frameworks

Build architectures with DoDAF 2 and UAF data centric approaches

Take a data centric approach so that all diagram views and matrices represent the architecture information.

Capability-based planning and project views

Build project views and roadmaps on how capabilities will be enabled over time.

BPMN integrated with the DM2 and UAF

Directly visualize the DM2 for OV-5 viewpoints, as well as OV-6c process flow viewpoints.

Inferred architecture information

Automated generation of operational exchanges, needlines, system exchanges, and system resource flows.

Autogenerate AV-2, OV-3 and SV-6 reports

Create reports on the fly with System Architect's easy to use native SQL reporting system.

Fit-for-purpose views

Customize the metamodel to properly capture information in sources of record, and to visualize the information in different ways.

Cause-effect and landscape heatmap analysis

Quickly get a 50,000-foot view of the architecture through System Architect's unique network- and landscape-style explorer diagrams.

Build and compare current state and future state architectures

Compare future-state architecture alternatives side-by-side, selectively merge contents, and baseline a desired future-state.

Interconnected eco-system

Link requirements, change management, and solution designs to drive business value.

DoDAF to DoDAF 2 to UAF

Migrate older DoDAF 1.5 architectures to DoDAF 2 using UNICOM's free DoDAF 2 migration toolkit. Automatically map DoDAF 2 to UAF by flipping a switch.

System requirements

Before you install System Architect®, make sure that the system meets the requirements for hardware, software, server environment, operating systems, and other factors. The following table shows the minimum system requirements to install and use System Architect®. Check the compatibility between the operating systems, browsers, databases and the application servers before you install System Architect®.

Operating Systems

Windows	10	11	2016	2019	2022
Datacenter			✔	✔	✔
Enterprise	✔	✔
Professional	✔	✔
Standard			✔	✔	✔

Hypervisors

VMware ESXi 5.0, 5.1, 5.5 & 6.0
VMware Workstation 10.0 & 11.0

Hardware	Requirement
Disk Space	5.5 GB during installation and 1 GB after the install is complete
Display	Super VGA monitor (with the screen resolution set to at least 800 x 600, small fonts setting)
Memory	Minimum of 2 GB of RAM The main SA process (SA2001.EXE) will need at least 500MB to run efficiently, this usage can in some cases increase beyond that, hence the reason of recommending 1 GB of free RAM. Some actions that can increase the usage of RAM memory (but not limited to) are: -- Opening a lot of diagrams during the day and don’t close them, -- Opening a very large diagram, -- Very large import such as a very large mass update
Network: Adapters, Drivers & Protocols	Network throughput of at least 50 Mbps is required between each System Architect® client and the database server used to store the encyclopedias.
Processor	Pentium-class PC, 2 GHz or Higher

Software

Databases

Microsoft SQL Server	2014	2016	2017*	2019*	2022*
Enterprise Edition	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Developer Edition		✔	✔	✔	✔
Standard	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Express	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Web Edition	✔

*Windows installation only

Web Browsers (Required for SAXT and html reporting only)

Google Chrome, latest version
Mozilla Firefox, current Extended Support Release (ESR) and newer

Web Servers (Required for System Architect® XT installation only)

Microsoft Internet Information Services 7.0, 7.5, 8.0 & 8.5, 10.0

Additional resources

Datasheet

Market-leading enterprise architecture tool

Get the datasheet

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