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OpenText ALM Octane vs TFS 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
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (8th)
TFS
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
98
Ranking in other categories
Test Management Tools (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of OpenText ALM Octane is 6.4%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TFS is 5.1%, down from 9.4% 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.
Pmurki@Micron.Com Praveen - PeerSpot reviewer
Version control is excellent and good for code review, branching, merging strategies and more
I've worked with TFS for source control and Agile project management. We also used TFS for seamless team collaboration and tracking.  I used TFS for a couple of years. Now, we use Azure DevOps. It's a wonderful tool for source control and CI/CD pipelines It's a really valuable tool for…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Backlog management is the most valuable feature. This was a capability that was missing or difficult to achieve in ALM Quality Center."
"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..."
"The most useful feature of Micro Focus ALM Octane is the dashboards, they are easy to use."
"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."
"The platform's most valuable feature is pipeline integration or continuous integration services."
"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 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."
"Since it is a robust solution, I face no performance issues. Also, considering how well the implementation process of the solution was carried out, we never faced any issues while using the solution."
"The solution's iteration board is good because you can track all your work with it."
"The tool's installation is straightforward."
"The initial setup is fairly easy."
"TFS allows me to handle automated builds and release management quite easily."
"The most valuable feature from my point of view is project management, which includes user stories as well as task management."
"The most valuable feature is simplicity."
"It is easy to push our changes from quality to pre-prod and prod."
 

Cons

"We’d like to see Platform One/Iron Bank compliant containers."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Also, while there is a Requirements Module in Octane, it is very plain. It's okay to have some requirements described there, but it's not really following the whole BDD approach. I would like to have more features for requirements in there."
"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."
"Updating items, sorting, bulk updates—these things could have a bit more flexibility, but it's still possible to do them."
"I would like to see TFS improve its web interface as there are some limitations with IDs and the integration behind it and with open-source tools like VS Code."
"There are many things that I cannot do, and I have a lot of bugs."
"The product access management features and connectivity need improvement. Rights management is also complex and could be simplified."
"The manageability and performance of the product are areas of concern where improvements are required."
"Its pricing could be improved."
"I understand Microsoft is phasing out TFS in favor of Git, so I would steer anyone interested in TFS to look into Git."
"The solution is stable but could improve."
"Access and permissions are confusing when attempting to include basic manual testing functionalities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's price is extremely high."
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight on a scale from one to ten, where ten is very expensive."
"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."
"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."
"There is a conversion fee for changing licenses."
"The senior management of my company handles the purchases of the solution. However, the price per developer was a major reason we switched from Jira. Apart from the complexity and the support, the price was a major reason that a team of 20 people unanimously decided that we would prefer to go with Micro Focus ALM Octane rather than Jira. The senior management had seen some benefit in it and they preferred it over Jira because the per developer cost was less and the support was superior."
"The cost of this product is very high."
"Use the Microsoft recommended “seat-based” licensing model. This allows a single developer with multiple machines to consume only one client license."
"It's just as expensive as HPE ALM, without many of the features, best used for development tool only to avoid higher costs."
"The pricing is reasonable at this time."
"I wouldn't say that this tool is cheap or expensive but in the middle."
"TFS is more competitively priced than some other solutions."
"I believe we pay on a yearly basis. I don't know the current costs of them. We outsource all that to a third party. Each of the developers gets a Microsoft Visual Studio Azure DevOps license, which gives them access to the TFS server as well. We probably pay on average about 1,800 Canadian Dollars a year for every developer, but that covers a lot more than just TFS."
"If running TFS on-premise is expensive, maybe you could consider moving to the Cloud and use the Visual Studio Team Services."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
64%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
4%
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.
Which is better - TFS or Azure DevOps?
TFS and Azure DevOps are different in many ways. TFS was designed for admins, and only offers incremental improvements. In addition, TFS seems complicated to use and I don’t think it has a very fri...
What do you like most about TFS?
Microsoft's technical team is supportive.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TFS?
While I do not know the exact pricing, TFS is likely more expensive than GitLab.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Micro Focus ALM Octane, Micro Focus Octane
Team Foundation Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Orange, Airbus, Haufe Group, Kellogg's, Claro, Bon Secours, World Wide Technology
Vendex KBB IT Services, Info Support, Fujitsu Consulting, TCSC, Airways New Zealand, HP
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText ALM Octane vs. TFS and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.