Jira vs OpenText ALM Octane comparison

Atlassian and OpenText are both solutions in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category. Atlassian is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.4, while OpenText is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.0. Atlassian holds a 22.6% mindshare in ALM, compared to OpenText’s 6.2% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Atlassian users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of OpenText users who would recommend it.

Jira

Read 274 Jira reviews

16,933 Views
11,358 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

OpenText ALM Octane

Read 40 OpenText ALM Octane reviews

5,120 Views
2,832 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Jira

OpenText ALM Octane

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Jira and OpenText ALM Octane compete in the project management and software development tools category. Based on feature richness and integrated solutions, OpenText ALM Octane seems to excel due to its comprehensive traceability and user experience in agile environments.

Features: Jira supports bug and issue tracking and project management with a robust API, and offers extensive support for agile methodologies and a wide range of plugins for customization. OpenText ALM Octane integrates Agile management, test management, and extensive automation capabilities, offering comprehensive traceability and a seamless user experience.

Room for Improvement: Jira's complexities in customization and lack of robust enterprise-level features, often requiring numerous plugins, can be cumbersome. OpenText ALM Octane could improve its reporting and manual testing flexibility, and strengthen its integrations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Jira provides deployment options across public and private clouds, largely supported by community forums and documentation, but lacks personalized service. OpenText ALM Octane is commonly deployed on-premises or private clouds, receiving positive feedback for technical support, though responsiveness and assistance could improve.

Pricing and ROI: Jira offers flexible pricing suitable for small teams and scalable for larger enterprises, though costs rise with add-ons, yielding a perceived high ROI from adaptability. OpenText ALM Octane is seen as more expensive, but its integrated nature justifies the cost for many enterprises, potentially offering greater ROI by reducing the need for additional tools.

To learn more, read our detailed Jira vs. OpenText ALM Octane Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Jira vs. OpenText ALM Octane

January 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Jira

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

274

Ranking in other categories

Application Requirements Management (2nd), Project Management Software (3rd)

OpenText ALM Octane

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

7th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jira is 22.6%, down from 23.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText ALM Octane is 6.2%, up from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

Featured Reviews

Saroj Ekka

Technical Delivery Lead at Applied Materials

Offers good repository integration, sprint board and easy to set up

There are some features and reports we need that are not there. For example, if I have to find out the capacity of the current sprint by user and compare it with the previous sprint, that visibility isn't there. We can know the capacity and what happened with the whole sprint, but not for an individual person to see where it's falling and how it's tracking. Report and analytics capabilities are important for a product manager. That visibility is important, so we use Jira. Some of the features are there, and I use my own Excels or other data things to compensate for that.

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GeorgNauerz

Managing Partner at Georg Nauerz Consulting

Makes team collaboration between IT and non-IT users easier with more transparency

The user experience is a lot better than any tool that I have used before. Overall, it is great. It has a smooth interface, which is very user-friendly. It makes it easier to work together and have more transparency and customization, which is very good. There are a lot of features where you can add fields, input individual fields, and input rules, like templated rule-based interaction between entities. The Backlog management is really interesting, because it is all in one place. You don't have a feature here and a feature there, instead you have the Backlog and testing using different backup items, like user storage features and tasks, all in one place. In addition, we are able to write documents, which we can transfer to backup items. Then, we can test them in the same solution without switching tools, or even switching from one part of the tool to another part, because it is all in one place. We use the solution’s Backlog and Team Backlog capabilities. They make our DevOps processes easier through transparency and asset collaboration.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Powerful features including a good reporting capability."

"It's easy to deploy."

"The user story map is excellent. The features can be composed into stories and they can be allocated to each of the sprints in a program increment. It allows you to see all that in the user story map, and you have various dashboards to see the stories in various views. You can see them as a backlog view, for example, or you can see as an actual sprint view."

"The most valuable features in Jira are the dashboard, reports, and boards that help us to control the advancement of the project."

"The task management aspect of Jira is pretty pure. They have a lot of great plugins that really expand your options."

"In general, the GUI is nice."

"It has enabled us to keep track of features or projects. Previously, we used to manually keep track in Office. We now have a centralized repository for all the information."

"The product is good, stable and very cost-effective for small teams."

More Jira pros

"The solution natively supports Agile-Waterfall hybrid software development at an enterprise scale. This is very important to us. Because even though the company wishes to go Agile, we still have projects which follow a Waterfall methodology. In order for us to accommodate both, we needed some sort of hybrid system. Because if we are using a fully Agile system, then the reporting might not be correctly extracted."

"The most useful feature of Micro Focus ALM Octane is the dashboards, they are easy to use."

"The interface is user-friendly."

"It's brought our entire team into a single tool. We're all looking at the same real-time data. Our project management office has been able to set up dashboards for individual teams, and do comparisons by teams, of integration, and cross-team integration, burn-up, burn-down, and cumulative flow..."

"We looked at all the market-leading tools, but we did not find anything quite as comprehensive as ALM Octane. When I say comprehensive, it's not just a single tool for Agile planning, backlog management release, sprint planning, etc., but it also has a built-in, comprehensive quality management module. It also has pipelines where we can hook up with our DevOps ecosystem/toolchain."

"I like the fact that you can use it on top of Jira."

"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"An improvement on previous versions because it comes as preconfigured as possible."

More OpenText ALM Octane pros

Cons

"Its search and reporting can be improved. They are already nice, but they can be further improved."

"In Jira, say on the team, no matter the methodology, it doesn't matter what I'm practicing, if I am using the tool for a while and I've compiled some sort of history. If I want to change my workflow, say my team is today using to-do in progress done, and tomorrow, I decide I want to use to-do in review and done, and I apply that new workflow, I have just now effectively lost all of my histories in terms of reporting."

"There's a really steep learning curve for configuration."

"In general, although we use JIRA, we never really learned how to use it properly. The learning curve of the solution is high. It has a lot of power, and yet we don't understand its capabilities."

"It should have Behavior Driven Development (BDD). There should be an option to add macros to help with that. A lot of people are using it now, and it would be nice if there was a way in there to be able to generate the BDD of commands whenever you're creating a story."

"When we use the plugin in Jira so, there are two different systems which we are working on, Jira and the X-ray plugin. The X-ray plugin should be incorporated into Jira because we have to fetch two reports. One report is faxed through Jira, and one can be faxed through X-ray. So there needs to be clarity about which the Jira team should reflect."

"I would love to have more features to make nice documents, like Release Notes or a feature overview, right from JIRA."

"The reports in Jira can be improved, especially for test reports. I find it difficult to customize and integrate for different testing purposes."

More Jira cons

"The biggest problem with ALM Octane is that it's very complex, so it's difficult to use and scale."

"Because JIRA is a leading tool for both development and requirements management - everybody is using JIRA - I'm pretty there will be a use case where people are trying to connect between ALM Octane and JIRA. The back-end configuration of the synchronization with JIRA could be simplified. The architecture is really complicated. We required a lot of machines to build the cluster and the configuration was not really clearly described within the documentation. This may have something to do with the fact that the software is pretty new."

"I have yet to experience the CI/CD part of Micro Focus ALM Octane but as demonstrated by the team who is providing the services, I see that the CI/CD could improve. When we check in the code, for the code snippet that has been checked in by a particular user, you need to open a separate file. When comparing Micro Focus ALM Octane to Jira, they have a separate window in which you can click on the ID and the code is visible in the snippet. It's a two-step process in Micro Focus ALM Octane and it's a single-step process in Jira. It's essential for the developers to think about this difference."

"We have some requests to beef up the manual testing abilities and the ability to report on testing progress. All the basics are there, but there's an issue of maintainability. For example... once you plan a test and it creates a run, more particularly a suite run, you can't edit the suite run afterward... That that is not realistic with how people work. Mistakes are made and people are humans and we change our minds about things. So the tool needs to allow for a bit more flexibility in that testing area, as well as some better widgets to report on progress."

"Development of extensions or connections to GitHub actions could be better. Better integration with Azure DevOps would also help."

"Globally, I don't see many major points of improvement. It's mostly plenty of little things, and it's weird to me that they are not in the product yet. They are really details, but they're annoying details... Today, in the tool, we've got plenty of assets we can handle, like requirements, user storage, defects, tasks and so on. And to all of those elements, we can add comments. We can add comments to any asset in Octane but not to tasks. It's just impossible to understand why it's not available for the tasks because it's available everywhere else. Similarly, for attachments, you can attach files absolutely everywhere except on automated runs, which is, again, awkward. I don't understand why on this element, in particular, you cannot do it. It's little touches like that."

"What could be improved in Micro Focus ALM Octane is its integration with Jira."

"The tool's price is high, making it an area where improvement is high."

More OpenText ALM Octane cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am not sure about the pricing, but I know its licensing is on a yearly basis."

"The price seems reasonable to me. It's very similar to Splunk."

"It is certainly a long-term solution for our company and for previous companies that I have worked for. They have these long-term term licenses, but I'm not sure if they really pay on a yearly basis. They are certainly using it for a really long period and for a lot of users."

"To try this solution, use their cloud offering to get familiar. After that, it's in my view worth the money."

"If you are using just Jira, it is cheap, but if you start to use it and you feel you need some more services or more functions, then you have to buy add-ons, which can make it expensive."

"The ballpark figure is about $100 a month."

"I don't have the number, but I sure wish Jira was less expensive. Its price point should be a little lower, and it should be more flexible for users who are just ticket viewers."

"I don't feel that price is an issue."

More Jira pricing and cost advice

"For what it does, it's very reasonably priced. I like the licensing model as well, because it's very flexible. You can scale licenses up and down for short periods of time."

"Microsoft is a big challenge for Micro Focus when it comes to pricing because they are much cheaper. But it definitely depends on the complexity of the environment. If it has multiple technologies, at that point, looking at other options and Microsoft would be a feasible approach."

"It will be as expensive as ALM.NET, if not more expensive. But here's a good tip: If you have ALM.NET, you are able to share your licenses from ALM.NET to Octane. You just have to define a dedicated number of licenses on ALM.NET and then you can share them with ALM Octane, with some configuration effort. This is something that you have to take into account, that there is a possibility of such license sharing that could decrease your costs. Compared to open-source tools, the price the ALM Octane is definitely higher, in terms of the licensing cost."

"Going forward, I think we will want to explore adding more licenses."

"The solution has reduced our testing costs."

"It's pretty pricey, one of the most expensive ones on the market... The value depends on if you use all the features that it has. It comes with a lot of features. The difference between the license structure of ALM and Octane versus JIRA, is that you get everything with ALM and Octane... For JIRA, you buy the pieces one piece at a time."

"It's expensive. HPE products, and now Micro Focus, have always been expensive. The license is not cheap, and it will always be a challenge, particularly for small organizations like ours."

"The cost of this product is very high."

More OpenText ALM Octane pricing and cost advice

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Answers from the Community

Harshal Vora

Principal Solutions Architect at InfoStretch

Apr 19, 2023

Which tool is integrated better with Jira - Micro Focus ALM Quality Center or TestRail by Gurock?

ALM Octane integrates easily out of the box with Jira, additionally, once you DevSecOps users are onboard to Octane, they will realize Octane does more, so they can reduce their dependence on Jira. Several of my customers have come to this realization. Octane is an Enterprise solution, but Jira is not.

See 2 answers

Evgeny Belenky

Director of Community at PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station)

Nov 16, 2021

Hello @Vishwa-Reddy, @GeorgNauerz, @Agne Gecevice and @reviewer1154316, Can you please help @Harshal Vora with their question?

Read full answer

reviewer1933914

Business Consultant at MFGS, Inc.

Apr 19, 2023

Read full answer

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

53%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

28%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Is Jira better or would you go with Micro Focus ALM Octane?

Hi Netanya, Basically , it all depends on the use cases for your environment and the business needs. Hope the below data may be relevant to you for identifying your needs and deciding on the approp...

See all answers

Which is better - Jira or Microsoft Azure DevOps?

Jira is a great centralized tool for just about everything, from local team management to keeping track of products and work logs. It is easy to implement and navigate, and it is stable and scalabl...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Jira?

We operate under a nonlimited license with Jira, allowing a number of users to access it with a single enterprise license.

See all answers

What do you like most about Micro Focus ALM Octane?

The platform's most valuable feature is pipeline integration or continuous integration services.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus ALM Octane?

The tool's price is extremely high. When I was using Micro Focus, there were ten licenses, costing around 1,38,000, which was outrageous.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Micro Focus ALM Octane?

The tool's price is high, making it an area where improvement is high.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Jira

Compared 18% of the time

IBM DOORS vs Jira

Compared 11% of the time

Polarion ALM vs Jira

Compared 7% of the time

Rally Software vs Jira

Compared 7% of the time

ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management vs Jira

Compared 4% of the time

More Jira Competitors

OpenText ALM / Quality Center vs OpenText ALM Octane

Compared 28% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs OpenText ALM Octane

Compared 10% of the time

TFS vs OpenText ALM Octane

Compared 3% of the time

Rally Software vs OpenText ALM Octane

Compared 2% of the time

Atlassian ALM vs OpenText ALM Octane

Compared 2% of the time

More OpenText ALM Octane Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Jira

February 2025

Download Jira product report

Buyer's Guide

OpenText ALM Octane

February 2025

Download OpenText ALM Octane product report

Also Known As

Jira Software

Micro Focus ALM Octane, Micro Focus Octane

Overview

Jira is a powerful cloud- and subscription-based application lifecycle and issue management solution. It is designed to aid users both in project management and in resolving any issues that arise at any point in the software development process. It is especially concerned with easing the ability of developers to collaborate.

Jira Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Jira include:

DevOps lifecycle visibility and planning. Jira provides application developers with tools that enable them to track and visualize where they are in the development process. This means that a DevOps team can measure their progress at all times. Jira’s roadmapping feature also enables a DevOps team to work more efficiently by setting goals for their projects, keeping them on track. Additionally, they are able to track whether they are meeting the goals that they set for their projects.

Regular product updates. Atlassian is constantly updating Jira so that it is continuously evolving into an ever more powerful and user-friendly solution. Users can be sure that the product that they are using is always being tweaked so as to provide them with the best possible project management solution.

Flexibility. Jira enables users to customize their workflows and dashboard so that the solution is operating in a way that best matches their needs. Jira can also integrate with more than 3,000 other applications and integrations. Organizations can use it to expand their project management and DevOps capabilities in many different ways.

Jira Features

Security capabilities. Jira is equipped with a number of useful security features. It gives administrators the ability to restrict access to certain tools so that only users who are authorized to complete certain tasks have access to the tools related to the completion of that task. Users can also set default permissions so that only particular users can work on new projects or particular projects.

Real-time notification feature. Users can set Jira so that it offers them notifications that contain critical information in real time. It can send users email notifications when pressing issues have been updated. They can also set it to notify them about tasks that may be due, or other similar events.
Activity log. Jira has the ability to track any and all changes that are taking place within the software framework. Users can keep a close eye on everything that is going on. This promotes a high level of visibility and can be leveraged to aid developers in their collaboration efforts.

Reviews from Real Users

Jira is a powerful solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its workflow engine and its highly customizable dashboard.

Bharath R., the tool implementation and project management lead at a financial services firm, writes, “I feel the strongest feature of Jira is its workflow engine. It empowers us to automate our workflows within our organization. It's the one characteristic of Jira which I think can help any organization, be it in any domain.”

Uday J., a staff engineer at a computer company, says, “Another thing that I like a lot about Jira is that in the dashboard, you can plug the modules that you want. You can enable certain sections. For example, you can show trend history, open Jira tickets, etc. Some of the managers have created a dashboard for each engineer.”

Atlassian

OpenText ALM Octane helps organizations implement a “quality everywhere” approach and improve Agile and DevOps development and testing processes to improve the flow of work across the software delivery value stream. You can tightly align quality efforts from development to release, employ a broad range of tests anchored by automation, and continuously monitor and improve for increased throughput. OpenText fosters an open approach so that quality is visible, traceable, and continuously improved. By synchronizing quality and testing with Agile and DevOps processes, risks are mitigated early in the software delivery value stream – speeding the way for faster delivery and improved customer satisfaction.

ALM Octane facilitates a tailored and scalable approach for large enterprises. You can deploy your way and minimize infrastructure needs with deployment options spanning on-premises, SaaS, and public cloud (Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure Marketplaces). Similarly, various licensing options can tailor the features to meet specific needs with support for thousands of concurrent users in geographically disperse locations.

OpenText

Sample Customers

Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.

Orange, Airbus, Haufe Group, Kellogg's, Claro, Bon Secours, World Wide Technology

Buyer's Guide

Jira vs. OpenText ALM Octane

January 2025

Free Report: Jira vs. OpenText ALM Octane

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