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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

"You no longer need to email people. You can mention them right in Jira and have conversations there."
"The most valuable feature is working with sprints and having the ability to create sprints."
"I'm working in the IT department, and the ticketing system is the most important service for us. We are also using some automation add-ons. It a very good product for handling tickets and tasks and managing processes. It is also very useful and easy to use."
"We have not encountered difficulties with the scalability."
"Jira queries can be used for different types of deployment automation processes."
"It is very flexible, so we can do pretty much what we want with it."
"The adaptability of the Scrum and Kanban boards for other uses, with careful use of the customization features."
"The level of stability is quite good."
"Current version of the solution is fairly stable."
"Micro Focus' technical support is good."
"The most useful feature of Micro Focus ALM Octane is the dashboards, they are easy to use."
"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."
"I like the fact that you can use it on top of Jira."
"The integration points are very good. Octane gives us a window not only into our manual testing, but also our automation testing and our performance testing. We can see all results from all three streams of testing in one place."
"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."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its ability to manage test scenarios, test results, and test automation, which are its primary functionalities."
 

Cons

"It lacks features to cover all testing aspects, so we often integrate it with other plugins or tools like X-ray."
"The next-generation software projects lack a lot, and I found quite a few bugs. There are some really basic things that you still cannot do. For instance, to put a mandatory due date for a task that you create in one of these projects is still not available. That's a bit of a block because people, especially those who are not technical, are not going to add anything if it's not mandatory. It's going to be difficult to teach them that they should do it anyway."
"Workflows can be improved. We don't use workflows because we can't handle that much complexity. Its interface could be more intuitive for workflows."
"The user interface is very detailed right now. It could be simplified if they consider targeting the user experience."
"A lot of the user interface could be updated."
"Lacks some common building block approaches to certain things."
"Could offer an improved user experience."
"The pricing is quite high."
"The reporting is lacking from a requirements matrix and a traceability perspective."
"The limitation of Octane is that we can't do a release outside of the sprint. We can only plan the release in the sprint. With Agile and JIRA tools, we can plan the release outside the sprint and do a global release of all the projects from the sprint."
"Currently, Micro Focus ALM Octane is considered an old-world tool in the industry and lacks the perception of being a new-age tool among its customers."
"Development of extensions or connections to GitHub actions could be better. Better integration with Azure DevOps would also help."
"Improvements could be made by way of additional integrations across the lifecycle."
"The product's requirements management feature needs enhancement in terms of functionality."
"The tool's price is high, making it an area where improvement is high."
"What could be improved in Micro Focus ALM Octane is its integration with Jira."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Jira is reasonable."
"JIRA's pricing is very economical. I would say that JIRA is a great deal more economical than Microsoft."
"I understand JIRA is quite expensive."
"We are on an annual license to use Jira."
"To try this solution, use their cloud offering to get familiar. After that, it's in my view worth the money."
"It is very cheap if you forego the local instance and stick to the cloud."
"For very small companies, if you have less than 10 individuals, it is $10 a year for each of the products. When we were a part of the enterprise and had more than 10 people using it, or before they came up with this solution for small companies, it was $2,500 a year for the license for Jira and Confluence, and I believe something like $600 a year to perpetuate the license. I can't remember if it was $600 or $2,500 annually. It was for up to 25 people at the time, and this was in the early 2000s and mid 2000s."
"There are other solutions that are free making this solution seem expensive in comparison."
"The solution has reduced our testing costs."
"In terms of pricing, it's comparable to what we had previously. It's not priced at the higher end of the scale by any means. It's priced nicely, in the middle of the market. For what you're getting, it's a very good tool."
"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."
"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 price of Micro Focus ALM Octane is too high compared to other solutions."
"If you compare the price with the functionality, it is pretty much the same as other solutions. If you compare it to Jira, for instance, it has a lot more functionality. You don't need any plug-ins, but it's also more expensive. Once you start adding your different plug-ins to Jira, you'll probably end up with the same amount or more. There is also a yearly support cost, which is usually 25% of the initial cost of the license."
"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."
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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.