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OpenText ALM Octane vs Polarion ALM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

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

OpenText ALM Octane
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
7th
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Polarion ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
8th
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of OpenText ALM Octane is 6.2%, up from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 7.4%, up from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Dina Bindi - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides traceability and compliance with high flexibility
It's extremely flexible. Configuring items is straightforward and doesn't require involving the supplier each time. We find the requirement management, test management, documentation, and dashboards very effective. However, we don't use DevOps-related features, such as integration with tools like SVN or Git, because we use Azure DevOps. The aspects related to requirements, testing, changes, tasks, and agile methodology are excellent, which is why we've been using it for a long time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The integration capability of ALM Octane was very straightforward. We had a supporting team, and they provided us with detailed documentation."
"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."
"It is a very stable tool. The tool has been in the industry for so many years. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"The most important feature is the integration among all the different features in just one tool: Agile management system, requirements management system, test management, defects management, automatic test execution. Really, if you're looking at other tools, you will never find all that integrated into just one tool with all the traceability, with all the elements in just one place."
"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."
"The filtering options are very good once you learn them. The document reports are also valuable. You can create reports in Word and PDF formats. That's very useful."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the function of the ALM system."
"The initial setup of this solution was straightforward, and there were not too many problems with it."
"I am impressed with the solution’s stability."
"Scalability is good...The integration is quite good."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its browser experience. I rate its traceability feature a ten out of ten. From the initial stage to the release, you can manage everything through a single point."
"It meets with everybody's needs without having to grab plugins."
"It's extremely flexible. Configuring items is straightforward and doesn't require involving the supplier each time. We find the requirement management, test management, documentation, and dashboards very effective."
"The best feature of Polarion ALM to me is its traceability link."
 

Cons

"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."
"There is an opportunity for them to do a little more with the dashboarding. We still feel that HPE Quality Center/HPE ALM reporting is very powerful. We talked with R&D, and there are some things on their roadmap, but at the same time, their strategy is to connect Octane with visualization tools such as Power BI."
"I like their smart analytics; perhaps they should continue to expand and improve there because it's a fantastic start."
"I would like to see the mobile testing improved so that we can simply select a mobile device, then specify what parameters we want, and the testing will be run based on that."
"Security and security management, meaning the integration of the security, could be enhanced. We know about Fortify, but it would be better to have security features in the original Octane platform without the need for another solution or another application."
"Promoting it more could help a lot of projects."
"They don't support all IDEs yet. We have Visual Studio code, which is not supported, and loved by our developers. This integration is missing. We also had to do our own in-house integration with the Confluence. That is also something that they could add."
"We’d like to see Platform One/Iron Bank compliant containers."
"The ease-of-use could be improved a little."
"The most important thing for them to improve should be platform-independent features. They should also provide extensive pipelines and release pipelines that we can define and we can work on."
"As Polarion ALM is a development-oriented tool, easy support or easy access is provided by default, but if I want to use detailed features, I need to write the script, particularly the VM script, and this is its area for improvement. I want Polarion ALM to have a graphical user interface that doesn't need scripting. In the next release of the tool, I'd like for it to not require scripting and programming because needing to run script language is time-consuming."
"Based on my understanding, the tool's integration capabilities with multiple tools is an area of concern that Polarion needs to focus on more."
"Technical support needs some improvement."
"The weak point of Polarion ALM software is about reporting and time for extraction of the data...The quality of reporting needs to improve."
"Nowadays, the dashboard is too complex to be created."
"The solution needs to improve its user experience and graphics."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"ALM Octane is very expensive."
"Pricing is the weakest point. It is expensive, but the tool has plenty of features. The main problem we have is that the pricing is very high compared to some other solutions."
"There is a conversion fee for changing licenses."
"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."
"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 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."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"Our license for Polarion ALM is yearly. And it's not the cheapest tool that we've looked at. So if we had made our decision purely based on the licensing cost, we wouldn't have selected Polarion."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is an expensive product."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
25%
Computer Software Company
15%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

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...
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 Polarion ALM?
I also recently suggested that CMS consider incorporating generative artificial intelligence into the system. This could greatly enhance requirement checking, improve form, content, and clarity, an...
What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?
We use Polarion ALM for software development, including requirements management, testing, change requests, and task tracking. We set up the environment by configuring items and reports based on use...
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus ALM Octane, Micro Focus Octane
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Orange, Airbus, Haufe Group, Kellogg's, Claro, Bon Secours, World Wide Technology
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText ALM Octane vs. Polarion ALM and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.