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Jira vs OpenText ALM Octane comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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
40
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 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
GeorgNauerz - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's an open-sourced product that is easy to customize."
"Jira queries can be used for different types of deployment automation processes."
"I feel the strongest feature of Jira is its workflow engine. It helps us 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."
"In Jira, the integrations I have used so far are the repository integration, like when it gets added, or the integration with Confluence, which is good."
"Jira is flexible and accessible for the end-user. It lets users track their requests. The look and feel are good for our purposes."
"I can use Jira Query Language (JQL) to write queries to see the stories that are there for the current sprint. I can also sort them by assignment. I also use Jira is for burndown charts, which give an indication of how efficiently the squad is performing. I also use the Active Sprints function and a feature called Planning Poker."
"Jira can track projects, time management of assignments, and keep everything on schedule. The performance of the solution is good."
"The integration of other open source tools with Jira is very useful. It allows us to create documents and transcriptions, making it versatile beyond software development."
"On the user side, what I like a lot is the reporting capabilities. There's no tool, to my knowledge, that gets anywhere close to Octane at the moment when it comes to the reporting capabilities. I can do everything with the reporting. There's nothing missing. I have all the options. I can create graphs, including graphs of several types and looks."
"The defect management gives us full-fledged capabilities for handling defects, including capturing the details of the defects and even screenshotting the defect cases. The defect management is comprehensive."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"We are seeing some real improvements in the way we do things. We are becoming more agile in the way we do it because of that and in a way that stories are managed. Stories are given lifecycles as opposed to just being entities within a tool."
"Micro Focus' technical support is good."
 

Cons

"Ease of administration and customization. It is really clunky in this area."
"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."
"Jira's collaboration and integration with other apps and tools could be improved."
"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 its own repository for test case creation, so that one does not have to resort to third-party tools and plugins."
"The dashboard reports can be improved. Its dashboard reports are good, but you cannot have complex reports. They are currently very basic. For instance, we can only choose two columns for a dashboard, so it is not friendly enough."
"Jira can improve by making methodologies better, such as scrum and agile. Additionally, improvements in Kanban boards are needed."
"The solution needs more integrations with Azure DevOps OnPrem."
"Technical support can be slow."
"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."
"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."
"What could be improved in Micro Focus ALM Octane is its integration with Jira."
"The solution should improve by adding scrum board-like functionality."
"Though Micro Focus ALM Octane doesn't have much of a bug, it lacks integration with some solutions. For example, my company has fairly new software, but it can't be integrated with Micro Focus ALM Octane, so integration with other software, particularly with less popular software, could be improved. Micro Focus ALM Octane also requires a lot of resources during its setup, and I find this another area for improvement. An additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of Micro Focus ALM Octane is the ability to customize the interface, especially when doing a manual test."
"Documentation is not clear."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to the value Jira provides, it’s not that expensive. It has an yearly licensing cost."
"To try this solution, use their cloud offering to get familiar. After that, it's in my view worth the money."
"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."
"It is an affordable tool."
"We feel that the product is a good value for the cost."
"It is very cheap if you forego the local instance and stick to the cloud."
"It depends on the type of license. In terms of subscription, it is cheap, and it works pretty well."
"We have an enterprise license that includes cloud service and support."
"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."
"The solution has reduced our testing costs."
"The price of Micro Focus ALM Octane is too high compared to other solutions."
"The comparison is always with Jira, so the pricing of Octane is a bit on the higher side. But if you look at what you have to add to Jira, on the plug-in side, to have the same abilities you have with Octane, you're more or less even, or even ahead with Octane."
"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."
"ALM Octane is very expensive."
"The cost of this product is very high."
"Going forward, I think we will want to explore adding more licenses."
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Answers from the Community

HV
Apr 19, 2023
Apr 19, 2023
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
EB
Nov 16, 2021
Hello @Vishwa-Reddy, @GeorgNauerz, @Agne Gecevice ​and @reviewer1154316, Can you please help @Harshal Vora ​with their question?
reviewer1933914 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 19, 2023
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. 
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
53%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
 

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...
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...
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.
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?
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.
What needs improvement with Micro Focus ALM Octane?
The tool's price is high, making it an area where improvement is high.
 

Also Known As

Jira Software
Micro Focus ALM Octane, Micro Focus Octane
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Jira vs. OpenText ALM Octane and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.