AIT uses Sparx Enterprise Architect as a technical bridge to industry

The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology is Austria’s largest non-university research organisation and has been using Enterprise Architect for many years to develop new digital systems. The decision to use the modelling platform was also made because the tool has many interfaces and plug-ins and is therefore ideally suited for industrial application.
Vienna – With around 1,400 employees, the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology is Austria’s largest non-university research organisation. It occupies a leading position in innovation in Austria and also plays a key role at European level as the research and technology institution that deals with the key infrastructure issues of the future. As a national and international hub at the interface between science and industry, the AIT scores highly with its scientific and technological expertise, experience in the markets, close customer ties and an outstanding research infrastructure.
Enterprise Architect enables close links to industry
Thanks to its close links with industry, the Lieber.Group (SparxSystems Europe, LieberLieber, Sparx Services Europe, ThreatGet) has also been cooperating with the AIT for years. In this context, the AIT also uses the Enterprise Architect modelling platform for the development of new digital systems.
Christoph Schmittner, MSC, is an expert in secure cyber-physical systems in the AIT research group ‘Dependable Systems Engineering’:
‘Before we started modelling with Enterprise Architect, we also looked at purely scientifically oriented systems. However, thanks to our close cooperation with industry, it quickly became clear that we would opt for Enterprise Architect. With its many interfaces and extensions, the modelling platform offers us an ideal technical connection to the industrial world.’
The possibility of using self-created MDG (model driven generation) technologies is also used intensively, for example to create suitable development languages for specific areas.

Christoph Schmittner, MSC, is an expert in secure cyber-physical systems in the AIT research group ‘Dependable Systems Engineering’ (Photo: AIT)
ThreatGet: Cyber-Security by Design
Around four years ago, the AIT Center for Digital Safety & Security began developing a tool for analysing the security of systems in security-critical application areas with the help of Enterprise Architect. Driven by the positive feedback, the cyber security product ThreatGet was developed, which is now distributed on the market by the Lieber.Group via partners. The product was presented to the public in June 2019 and has since won several awards (eAward 2020, Constantinus Award 2021).
Peter Lieber, founder and Managing Director of SparxSystems Europe and owner of the Lieber.Group, comments:
‘Thanks to our close collaboration with the AIT, as specialists in model-based software and system development, we always keep our finger on the pulse of industry-related research. We are therefore particularly pleased that the Enterprise Architect modelling platform that we distribute now occupies an important position at the AIT. Over the years, we have been able to realise various developments together, and with ThreatGet we have also created a product for the booming cyber security market.’

Peter Lieber, Founder and Managing Director of SparxSystems Europe and owner of the Lieber.Group

ThreatGet enables ongoing cyber security risk analysis throughout the entire development process in order to be able to implement the essential security concept of ‘security by design’ in the age of globally networked systems, in which the security architecture of a new system is taken into account and built in from the concept blog.
ThreatGet was developed as a plug-in for the Enterprise Architect modelling tool and guarantees, for example, that vehicle manufacturers comply with the new European ECE level security directive (UNECE WP29) on cyber security.
VALU3S: EU research project with 41 partners from ten countries
The EU research project VALU3S aims to reduce the development costs of automated systems with regard to security, cyber security and data protection requirements. To this end, 41 partners from ten countries are working together. The VALU3S project focuses on accelerating verification and validation (V&V) in the development process throughout the entire development cycle.
Verification is the testing of a component with regard to its correspondence with the required properties. The validation carried out in the next step examines whether the defined utilisation objectives are actually fulfilled in a practical experiment.
VALU3S will cover V&V of automated systems in six different areas: Automotive, Agriculture, Railway, Healthcare, Aerospace and Industrial Robotics. For a V&V process, detailed test cases and requirement specifications must be defined for various situations. It is a particular challenge to find suitable test cases that are also representative of real-world scenarios.
Dipl.-Ing. Rupert Schlick, also an expert in the AIT research group ‘Dependable Systems Engineering’, adds:
‘Here, too, we are building on many years of experience. For example, we have developed a family of special tools based on Enterprise Architect for the automated creation of software tests. In the VALU3S project, we are now creating a specific modelling language that we will ultimately make available to all partners as MDG technology.’

Dipl.-Ing. Rupert Schlick, expert for secure cyber-physical systems in the AIT research group ‘Dependable Systems Engineering’ – (Photo: AIT)
About AIT
The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology is Austria’s largest non-university research organisation. With its eight centres, the AIT sees itself as a highly specialised research and development partner for industry. The Center for Digital Safety & Security develops state-of-the-art information and communication technologies (ICT) and systems to make critical infrastructures safe and reliable in the context of comprehensive and global networking and digitalisation.
In the Dependable Systems Engineering (DSE) research area, experts have been investigating the interactions between safety, security and reliability for many years and developing new methods and tools to ensure the holistic safety of systems. The experts play a leading role in the industry standards of tomorrow, e.g. ISO TC 22 (automotive sector), ISO TC 299 (robotics), IEC TC 56 (dependability), IEC TC 62 (medicine), IEC TC 65 (control technology for industrial processes) and AIOTI WG03 (M2M). These many years of experience and expertise are also made available to customers in the form of training and consulting.
About SparxSystems Europe
Sparx Systems Pty Ltd (Australia) was founded in 1996 and is the manufacturer of Enterprise Architect, a globally successful UML modelling platform. Enterprise Architect is used for designing and building software systems, business process modelling and modelling any process or system. Enterprise Architect is recognised by over 1 million users for its performance at an unbeatable price. Enterprise Architect is an easy-to-understand, team-based modelling environment that helps companies to analyse, design and create systems that can be accurately understood and documented. With the help of this tool, companies are enabled to collect and visualise the often very dispersed knowledge of teams and departments in a centralised manner.
SparxSystems Software Europe was set up in 2004 to provide the best possible Enterprise Architect service to the many customers in their language and time zone, supporting the entire German-speaking region with licence acquisition, training and consulting. SparxSystems Software Europe is a business unit of the Lieber.Group.