IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs OpenText ALM Octane comparison

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. OpenText ALM Octane

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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

IBM Engineering Lifecycle M...

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

13th

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

OpenText ALM Octane

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is 3.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText ALM Octane is 6.1%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

Featured Reviews

Harold Pogue

Global IT Director of Digital Platforms. Digital and Connected Commerce at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

A complex deployment that is not stable, but is cloud-based

The team of 15 to 20 software engineers uses IBM Rational ALM and Jira for testing. They coupled different online packages together because the Duration Enterprise was impossible to use IBM Rational ALM did not help the organization and we ended up moving to another solution. The most valuable…

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The transition to a SaaS-based solution is a distinct advantage."

"It is relatively easy to use and user-friendly once the setup is complete."

"The solution is customizable."

"One of the key advantages of IBM Rational ALM is its workflow capabilities, which enable seamless collaboration between development and production teams and ensure that all stakeholders are aware of the progress and readiness of the solution. Additionally, the solution is good for integration."

"The cataloging is a very valuable feature. For a lot of enterprises, they end up not knowing which applications do specific features. The cataloging helps with this. It's not that verbose, but it still gives you allowances to put in more detail."

"You can customize the board according to your needs."

"We have something called the GC (global configuration), which is a unique feature compared to any other competitor we have in the ALM space."

"It helped us contain critical things, like source code and several documents, which is very important to us."

More IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) pros

"The key feature is the usability. It is fast to learn and easy to use. It's very intuitive to work with. Most of the important functions are available via a few clicks, compared to other tools where I have to open a sub-menu and then a sub-menu and another sub-menu, and then press a button."

"It's more streamlined because we have it all under one umbrella. And once the business requirements and rules have been created, we can do test cases and apply them to the business rules."

"People really how easy it is to customize. In some previous tools, that has been very limited, or you had to know how to write code to do some of the customizations, or it was very confusing. Going back to the user interface, they've made the customization of the tool, the workspace settings, very easy for people to figure out and use."

"Octane creates a gentle approach to Agile-based projects."

"The feature I found most valuable in Micro Focus ALM Octane is its ability to integrate with the CI/CD stack."

"There are a lot of predefined reports. We can attach additional reports for users, like who worked on what defect and when, as well as what is the status of the release compared to the previous release. It is really endless. All the data is really linked together. Then, if all the data is linked together, there is an option to prepare reports out of it. We are very impressed with its reporting capabilities."

"It is a very scalable solution."

"A valuable feature is the pipeline, so that we can now connect to Jenkins and then have all the results from testing, from external, in the tool, so that we can see the whole approach from there. Also, We can work with labels so we have better filtering solutions than in ALM. And it's much smarter and leaner to use than ALM."

More OpenText ALM Octane pros

Cons

"The features should be more intuitive. If I'm looking for something, its location should be easy to locate."

"The reporting functionality needs to be improved."

"The user interface requires significant improvement as it is overly complex."

"Of course it would be related to customer experience. The solution is not user friendly at all. It needs an expert to use it, although the reporting feature was okay."

"The product must be more user-friendly."

"The stability of this solution can be improved."

"I think nowadays people are getting into Jira and other tools. What is happening is, this solution is becoming more traditional, whereas Jira and other tools are more attractive for the new users to learn and start using because of the graphical interfaces."

"The stability of IBM Rational ALM could be improved."

More IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) cons

"We've only had a few stability issues. Generally, we have issues following any deployment they do, so if they do a deployment on a Sunday, then we may have a couple of issues on a Monday or Tuesday."

"It would help us if ALM Octane got FedRAMP-certified, so our government departments could use the cloud solution. That way our external consultants could access it. We've created a URL to get to it, but if it were FedRAMP-certified and service and had support in the continental United States, that would be better."

"Documentation is not clear."

"The product's requirements management feature needs enhancement in terms of functionality."

"There's a trend in our requests to have the ability to export data, en masse, out of Octane. There are capabilities within Octane to export data, but there are specifics around test suites and requirements and relations, as well as certain attributes, that we would like to be able to export easily out of Octane and into a database or Excel."

"Technical support can be slow."

"There are some challenges when we want to integrate the tool with other products, and it takes time for a team to figure out how to do it."

"Improvements could be made by way of additional integrations across the lifecycle."

More OpenText ALM Octane cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution could be reduced. Many of our customers are not using all the features and this could be why our clients feel the price is too high."

"IBM Rational ALM has both monthly and yearly licensing options."

"The solution is not cheap."

"This product is a little expensive and we had to pay extra to have them set it up for us."

"We have a contract, but I am not aware of the details."

"I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. The product is neither cheap nor expensive."

"The tool's price is extremely high."

"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."

"There is a conversion fee for changing licenses."

"The solution has reduced our testing costs."

"The price of Micro Focus ALM Octane is too high compared to other solutions."

"The cost of this product is very high."

"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."

More OpenText ALM Octane pricing and cost advice

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845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Financial Services Firm

26%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Rational ALM?

The solution is customizable.

What needs improvement with IBM Rational ALM?

The user interface requires significant improvement as it is overly complex. For business users with no experience in IT, it can be particularly challenging to understand the UI and create test cas...

What is your primary use case for IBM Rational ALM?

We use IBM Rational ALM as part of our overall application suite for our manufacturing company. It is used by our engineering team to capture requirements, perform testing, and manage defects. Spec...

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...

What do you like most about Micro Focus ALM Octane?

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

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

OpenText ALM Octane is an expensive product. However, it offsets costs by saving time and money, thus creating a balance between expenses and benefits. Our organization with over 1500 users sees sa...

Jira vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

Comparisons

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Polarion ALM vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

Compared 12% of the time

PTC Integrity vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

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More IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) Competitors

Jira vs OpenText ALM Octane

Compared 51% of the time

OpenText ALM / Quality Center vs OpenText ALM Octane

Compared 25% 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 3% of the time

More OpenText ALM Octane Competitors

Product Reports

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

Download IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) product report

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) report

OpenText ALM Octane

Download OpenText ALM Octane product report

Also Known As

IBM Engineering Rhapsody, Rational ALM, MKS

Micro Focus ALM Octane, Micro Focus Octane

Overview

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management stands out for its robust Agile Scrum planning, lifecycle traceability, and tool management, offering cloud-based configurability and strong collaboration features.

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management provides rich capabilities for Agile project management, facilitating requirements and test management, configuration management, and version control. Its integration with IBM Doors supports comprehensive requirements handling, and the cloud-based platform enhances collaborative efficiency across teams. Despite needing advances in user-friendliness and reporting, ELM's global configuration and compliance features make it invaluable in demanding environments.

What are the key features of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management?

Scrum-based planning: Supports Agile methodologies with rich planning tools.
Lifecycle traceability: Offers complete traceability across development stages.
Customizable workflows: Adaptable workflows with Kanban for flexibility.
Git integration: Supports efficient version control and collaboration.
Global Configuration: Manages complex configurations globally.
Compliance and reporting: Ensures robust auditing and comprehensive reporting capabilities.

What benefits should be evaluated in reviews?

Collaboration: Enhanced sharing across platforms for seamless teamwork.
Cost-effectiveness: Delivers efficient tools that optimize project spend.
Comprehensive requirement handling: Facilitates detailed requirement management through IBM Doors integration.

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management is vital in sectors like automotive and manufacturing, where it implements Agile frameworks to manage requirements, conduct testing, and handle defects. It integrates into development pipelines ensuring live traceability and visibility, supporting critical engineering processes efficiently.

IBM

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

Tennis Australia, WeCloud AB, Port Otago Limited, Logicalis US, Valmer, The Chevrolet Volt, Ashurst

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

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. OpenText ALM Octane