Jira Align vs OpenText ALM Octane comparison

Atlassian and OpenText are both solutions in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category. Atlassian is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.8, while OpenText is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0. Atlassian holds a 1.5% mindshare in ALM, compared to OpenText’s 6.2% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Atlassian users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of OpenText users who would recommend it.

Jira Align

Read 41 Jira Align reviews

1,134 Views
704 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

OpenText ALM Octane

Read 41 OpenText ALM Octane reviews

4,594 Views
2,508 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Jira Align

OpenText ALM Octane

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

OpenText ALM Octane and Jira Align compete in Agile project management tools category. OpenText ALM Octane holds a competitive edge through its robust CI/CD integration and Agile frameworks support, enhancing Agile deliveries more effectively.

Features: OpenText ALM Octane offers extensive end-to-end traceability and integrates multiple management systems on a single platform. It incorporates strong Agile frameworks like SAFe and supports CI/CD pipelines. Jira Align provides strategic control views, integrates seamlessly with Jira, and offers comprehensive PI planning and roadmap features.

Room for Improvement: OpenText ALM Octane could benefit from better integration of testing practices across methodologies, enhanced flexibility in reporting, and improved user management. Users express the need for more adaptable dashboards and simplified licensing. Jira Align users desire better customization, enhanced Jira synchronization, and greater pricing transparency along with improved mobile friendliness.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: OpenText ALM Octane is typically deployed on-premises and is complemented by strong customer support with direct developer consultations. Jira Align provides diverse deployment options, mainly on public cloud, offering ease in deployment and responsive customer service through user feedback integration.

Pricing and ROI: OpenText ALM Octane is considered expensive, justified by its rich features, and offers ROI through reduced manual testing and integration costs. Jira Align is also seen as costly, especially for smaller companies, but its pricing is deemed reasonable for large enterprises due to its extensive feature set, making it suitable for enterprise-level Agile management solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Jira Align vs. OpenText ALM Octane Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Jira Align vs. OpenText ALM Octane

April 2025

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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

Jira Align

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

9th

Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Value Stream Management Software (1st)

OpenText ALM Octane

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

8th

Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jira Align is 1.5%, down from 1.7% 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

Tonia Spight-Sokoya

Program Support for Third Party External SPM Lead Business Execution Consultant/PMP PM at Wells Fargo

User-friendly with good documentation and the ability to integrate with other third arty vendors

I am really focused on identity access management and getting access to the vendors. Right now, I'm setting up vendor access through Azure. You can do that or with the IAM. Sometimes we have to create several different types of access because we have vaulted databases. We have the Unix databases, I have MySQL, and we have Mongo, where I get access to those user classes or to the databases in the host group. Those are all different access scenario forms that I submit after I do the configuration in the form with the security team. I need clarity on the IAM. I'm not clear on PAM eighter. Is there a form that they have to submit to get access to the internal cyber-risk teams to get their access for people to be able to use the tool on the Confluence side? Do they have to send some kind of form to the operation's security or enterprise security? To be able to get the access for privileged access, do they need to be working on projects that have vaulted databases? I still need to figure out how that works. Other companies that are competitors of Jira and Confluence, are able to create their active directories for the vendors that don't come in internally. They only do access through the cloud and through third-party, two-factor identification. That's something I was wondering if that was already implemented in the packages, the package for Confluence. It would be nice to have that right in the solution.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup is very straightforward."

"In our workflow, we utilize a dashboard. Our product development backbone relies on two-week sprints. At the beginning of each sprint, we conduct a planning meeting to discuss and challenge the backlogs. Throughout the sprint, we conduct daily sessions to review code, ensure alignment with coding standards, and address any issues. Once all tasks are completed, we proceed with the deployment process."

"I joined the company because they had a large project, and as a startup company, they needed to scale up efficiently. My task was to review the current baseline, assess the team's capabilities, and propose solutions to increase production capacity. Upon observing the process in Jira Align, I realized we didn't need to invest heavily in expanding capacity."

"Jira is one of the most widely used tools in the market, and it has a vast amount of data already stored in it. Jira Align is crucial in orchestrating this data and providing valuable views and insights. However, it's essential for tools like Jira Align to offer configurable features. While complete customization might not always be feasible for enterprise-level tools, configurable features allow organizations to drive transformation accordingly."

"The interface of Jira Align is very easy to use and manage"

"I found Confluence most valuable."

"Jira Align is an intuitive tool that features a roadmap view...The initial setup was straightforward...Jira Align is definitely worth the money."

"Velocity and reporting provide good visibility, burndown charts, and particularly velocity measurement."

More Jira Align pros

"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."

"The most valuable features of the solution are its ability to manage test scenarios, test results, and test automation, which are its primary functionalities."

"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 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."

"Its end-to-end traceability is one of the big advantages. Most of our agile projects work in a closed team structure. We are seeing what is the flow, where we are, and what is the project milestone. So, it provides end-to-end traceability and good visibility of project milestones."

"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."

"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."

"Micro Focus' technical support is good."

More OpenText ALM Octane pros

Cons

"Jira Align has price packages for different purposes. Users must do their own research and see if it fits their purpose."

"In my company, we found the solution to have many issues regarding its ability to handle claims and other processes since the solution is not available on a single window."

"I don't know if Jira provides training for people who want to be certified with the solution, so that is one of the problems."

"The solution needs to improve its pricing. It also needs to provide an integrated view of how other tasks are to be tracked. It would be also useful to see the integration of Confluence, Teams, and Slack into the product. I want to be able to communicate directly with others while using the product. I am also not sure if the integration of third-party alternate workflow tools like SAP would be possible."

"Maybe some of the terms and the connectivity could be improved."

"One feature that needs improvement is the tool's ability to change schedules automatically. Users can't simply drag and drop tasks to reschedule them without notifying the entire team. This lack of functionality can hinder project management control, as changes should be communicated transparently to all team members."

"Other companies that are competitors of Jira and Confluence, they are able to create their active directories for the vendors that don't come in internally."

"AI is utilized worldwide; they could implement the functionality for notifications and other organizational operations in the product."

More Jira Align cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The Requirements Module could be better, to build up a better requirements process. There's a huge improvement from ALM.NET to Octane, but it's still not really facilitating all the needs of the product owners, to set up their requirements in Octane."

"There is room for improvement in OpenText ALM Octane's flexibility. While it aims to be as flexible as possible for a large enterprise application, sometimes there are limitations that may not meet specific organizational needs."

"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."

"The reporting is lacking from a requirements matrix and a traceability perspective."

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

More OpenText ALM Octane cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing and licensing costs are rated lower, around six mainly due to significant increases in licensing costs that were not well-received by users."

"The license for Jira Align is priced fairly."

"The tool is moderately expensive."

"Jira Align is quite expensive for small-to-medium companies, but it's quite reasonable for larger ones."

"Jira Align is an expensive solution."

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate Jira Align a seven out of ten."

"Jira Align is an expensive solution."

"Our customers buy licenses. We are not involved in its purchase."

More Jira Align pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"There is a conversion fee for changing licenses."

"The tool's price is extremely 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."

"The product is highly priced compared to other tools."

More OpenText ALM Octane pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Insurance Company

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 Jira Align?

I joined the company because they had a large project, and as a startup company, they needed to scale up efficiently. My task was to review the current baseline, assess the team's capabilities, and...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Jira Align?

The platform's communication features could be more robust for better team integration.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Jira Align?

We use Jira Align for business strategies, collaboration, and reporting. The solution allows us to manage the various products and features delivered on that platform.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Micro Focus ALM Octane?

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

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

OpenText ValueEdge vs Jira Align

Compared 42% of the time

ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management vs Jira Align

Compared 24% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Jira Align

Compared 5% of the time

Rally Software vs Jira Align

Compared 5% of the time

Planview AgilePlace vs Jira Align

Compared 4% of the time

More Jira Align Competitors

Jira vs OpenText ALM Octane

Compared 49% of the time

OpenText ALM / Quality Center vs OpenText ALM Octane

Compared 26% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs OpenText ALM Octane

Compared 8% of the time

Rally Software vs OpenText ALM Octane

Compared 3% of the time

TFS vs OpenText ALM Octane

Compared 3% of the time

More OpenText ALM Octane Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Jira Align

April 2025

Download Jira Align product report

Buyer's Guide

OpenText ALM Octane

April 2025

Download OpenText ALM Octane product report

Also Known As

AgileCraft

Micro Focus ALM Octane, Micro Focus Octane

Overview

Jira Align is a cloud-based agile planning tool designed to help enterprises visualize, manage, and carry out large-scale software and IT projects. Jira Align’s features are designed to align the activities of your company’s development team with the overall goals of the organization by helping you achieve the following results:

Connect and coordinate enterprise-level business teams.
Make your entire enterprise’s work visible to drive and improve business outcomes.
Improve product quality with a fully aligned organization.
Shorten delivery cycles by increasing operational efficiency.

With Jira Align’s integration with Jira Software, businesses can simplify governing large-scale software development efforts by translating their strategy and goals into the technical execution and delivery of work.

Jira Align uses the aggregated data from Jira Software to produce reports on every aspect of the development process. Product stakeholders are granted immediate visibility into the progress that has been made and can easily identify delays and their causes.

The solution also assists in budget planning by assigning expenses to various work items and giving management real-time insights into ongoing expenditures and performance against set budgets.

Jira Align Features

Some of the top features and benefits of using Jira Align include:

Strategy management: Jira Align provides a clear visualization of where your enterprise is holding via strategic snapshots. The snapshot helps guide teams throughout the product. With the snapshot in view, it becomes easier to see and track the goals your company wants to carry out.

Progress monitoring: View a progress bar that provides indication of the level of completeness of your projects. The interface is populated with live data, which assists with planning and execution reporting.

Reporting and metrics: Jira Align creates valuable insights using the aggregated data it collects, ensuring that changes are tracked across teams and results are made visible early on in the process. These metrics allow managers to quickly determine what actions need to be taken.

Scalability: Jira Align is designed to work within organizations with hundreds of technical staff members and it can scale to support tens of thousands of users.

Backlogs and workflows: Effectively manage your work utilizing backlogs and workflow boards.

Customizable dashboard: Lay out key data points to help management keep tabs on important items. Easily make decisions based on active live consolidated data along with forecasting, risk tracking reports, and more. To help lower risks, Jira Align provides you with a visualization of program cross dependencies. It also displays a comprehensive view of resource utilization across projects, and highlights inefficiencies so that they can be resolved quickly.

Reviews from Real Users

Jira Align stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its program-level planning options and its reporting capabilities.

A project manager at a consultancy notes, “I like how things can be sorted out, and it shows the different objectives one can do. You could also create a team view that would allow your team to see work outcomes. Jira Align also helps with the reporting, because we can export data to Excel or another format.”

Atlassian

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

Anthem, nielsen, Homeland Security, NCR, dimension data

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

Buyer's Guide

Jira Align vs. OpenText ALM Octane

April 2025

Free Report: Jira Align vs. OpenText ALM Octane

Find out what your peers are saying about Jira Align vs. OpenText ALM Octane and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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