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OpenText ALM Octane vs Polarion ALM comparison

OpenText and Siemens are both solutions in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category. OpenText is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.3, while Siemens is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.2. OpenText holds a 6.0% mindshare in ALM, compared to Siemens’s 8.2% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of OpenText users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Siemens users who would recommend it.
OpenText ALM Octane
Read 41 OpenText ALM Octane reviews
  • 3,963 Views
  • 2,200 Comparison Views
92% willing to recommend
Polarion ALM
Read 22 Polarion ALM reviews
  • 3,837 Views
  • 2,560 Comparison Views
87% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

OpenText ALM Octane and Polarion ALM are competitive solutions in the ALM space. ALM Octane holds an edge with its agile-focused capabilities and integration flexibility, making it preferable in agile environments.

Features: ALM Octane offers comprehensive integrations with agile management, backlog management, and real-time analytics, supporting multiple tools and methodologies. Its compatibility with the SAFe framework enhances agile deliveries. Polarion ALM provides strong requirements management, traceability, and document control capabilities, making it suitable for regulated environments. Its seamless cross-department utilization without plugins adds value in organizations.

Room for Improvement: ALM Octane users see a need for more flexible reporting, better integration with external tools, and improved handling of complex organizational structures. Enhancements in mobile testing processes and reporting features are also desired. Polarion ALM requires improvements in user experience, planning features, and third-party tool integration, which often involves extensive configuration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ALM Octane is mainly deployed on-premises but offers private and hybrid cloud options, with praise for its technical support and custom query capabilities. Polarion ALM supports versatile deployment with additional public cloud options. It is known for responsive support, but configuration complexity can be challenging.

Pricing and ROI: Both ALM solutions are seen as expensive, yet they offer significant functionality. ALM Octane is considered cost-effective for agile scenarios due to included features that eliminate the need for additional plugins. Polarion ALM's pricing is market-aligned but necessitates extra licensing for more features, affecting cost-effectiveness. Both promise improved efficiency and integration, suggesting potential ROI with proper use.

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To learn more, read our detailed OpenText ALM Octane vs. Polarion ALM Report (Updated: May 2025).
Buyer's Guide
OpenText ALM Octane vs. Polarion ALM
May 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

OpenText ALM Octane
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
7th
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Polarion ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
6th
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of OpenText ALM Octane is 6.0%, up from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 8.2%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

GeorgNauerz - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable tool for sprint planning, test management, quality management, and automated testing
I think the area of release management in the tool is an area of concern where improvements are required. In general, the connection between releases and scrum teams needs improvement, as it could be optimized owing to its linkages, making it very uncomfortable as soon as you have strong teams or scrum teams that work with different items over several releases. In future product releases, the solution needs to focus a bit more on the metric part. The product's dashboard is a metric for productivity and process control.
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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.
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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the fact that you can use it on top of Jira."
"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."
"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 platform's most valuable feature is pipeline integration or continuous integration services."
"It’s easy to set up."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"We like Micro Focus ALM Octane because its performance is okay, and its stability is okay, so we use it a lot. The platform is easy to use."
"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."
More OpenText ALM Octane pros
"I am impressed with the solution’s stability."
"You can see the work ticket and you can circulate that within the teams. You can define your flows, customize according to your needs, and you can create dashboards and create the reports according to your needs."
"Scalability is good...The integration is quite good."
"The most valuable feature is the function of the ALM system."
"The technical support is quite good."
"Polarion ALM's integration is very good and easy to use."
"The software is stable."
"The initial setup of this solution was straightforward, and there were not too many problems with it."
More Polarion ALM pros
 

Cons

"Improvements could be made by way of additional integrations across the lifecycle."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"There's a trend in our requests to have the ability to export data, en masse, out of Octane. There are capabilities within Octane to export data, but there are specifics around test suites and requirements and relations, as well as certain attributes, that we would like to be able to export easily out of Octane and into a database or Excel."
"We’d like to see Platform One/Iron Bank compliant containers."
"What could be improved in Micro Focus ALM Octane is its integration with Jira."
More OpenText ALM Octane cons
"The interface for this solution needs to be made more user-friendly to provide a better user experience."
"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."
"The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing features that are common in web-based applications."
"One of Polarion's shortcomings would be planning. It can handle plans, but the planning feature is very basic."
"Technical support needs some improvement."
"Test management lacks an automated process."
"The configuration aspect of the solution is not easy. A person needs a lot of programming knowledge in order to successfully handle the job."
"Based on my understanding, the tool's integration capabilities with multiple tools is an area of concern that Polarion needs to focus on more."
More Polarion ALM cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive. HPE products, and now Micro Focus, have always been expensive. The license is not cheap, and it will always be a challenge, particularly for small organizations like ours."
"The solution has reduced our testing costs."
"The cost of this product is very high."
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight on a scale from one to ten, where ten is very expensive."
"The tool's price is extremely high."
"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'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."
More OpenText ALM Octane pricing and cost advice
"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."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
"It is an expensive product."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"The solution is expensive."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"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
25%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
26%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
8%
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...
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
What do you like most about Polarion ALM?
It is a very stable solution.
See all answers
What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?
The user interface of Polarion ALM needs improvement as it can experience changes that disrupt workflows, especially during major updates. Sometimes, database migrations take too long, spanning two...
See all answers
What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?
As a manual tester, I use Polarion ALM ( /products/polarion-alm-reviews ) for our weekly builds validation. These builds are crucial as they eventually lead to final release builds for customers. I...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

Jira vs OpenText ALM Octane Logo
Jira vs OpenText ALM Octane
Compared 47% of the time
OpenText ALM / Quality Center vs OpenText ALM Octane Logo
OpenText ALM / Quality Center vs OpenText ALM Octane
Compared 26% of the time
Microsoft Azure DevOps vs OpenText ALM Octane Logo
Microsoft Azure DevOps vs OpenText ALM Octane
Compared 8% of the time
TFS vs OpenText ALM Octane Logo
TFS vs OpenText ALM Octane
Compared 3% of the time
ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management vs OpenText ALM Octane Logo
ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management vs OpenText ALM Octane
Compared 2% of the time
More OpenText ALM Octane Competitors
Codebeamer vs Polarion ALM Logo
Codebeamer vs Polarion ALM
Compared 30% of the time
Jira vs Polarion ALM Logo
Jira vs Polarion ALM
Compared 23% of the time
Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Polarion ALM Logo
Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Polarion ALM
Compared 15% of the time
Jama Connect vs Polarion ALM Logo
Jama Connect vs Polarion ALM
Compared 8% of the time
More Polarion ALM Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
OpenText ALM Octane
May 2025
OpenText ALM Octane reportDownload OpenText ALM Octane product report
Buyer's Guide
Polarion ALM
May 2025
Polarion ALM reportDownload Polarion ALM product report
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus ALM Octane, Micro Focus Octane
No data available
 

Overview

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

The world’s first 100% browser-based ALM enterprise solution, which enables seamless collaboration across disparate teams, multi-directionally linked work items, full traceability, accelerated productivity and automated proof of compliance.

Siemens
 

Sample Customers

Orange, Airbus, Haufe Group, Kellogg's, Claro, Bon Secours, World Wide Technology
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group
Buyer's Guide
OpenText ALM Octane vs. Polarion ALM
May 2025
Free Report: OpenText ALM Octane vs. Polarion ALM
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText ALM Octane vs. Polarion ALM and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
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856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
See our OpenText ALM Octane vs. Polarion ALM report.

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