OpenText Software Delivery Management vs Polarion ALM comparison

OpenText Software Delivery Management vs. Polarion ALM

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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 Software Delivery ...

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

8th

Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

7th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Polarion ALM

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

3rd

Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

6th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of OpenText Software Delivery Management is 5.1%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 7.5%, up from 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Polarion ALM	7.5%
OpenText Software Delivery Management	5.1%
Other	87.4%

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

Featured Reviews

GeorgNauerz

Managing Partner at Georg Nauerz Consulting

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.

Read full review

Dina Bindi

Information and Communication technology at CNH Industrial

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.

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

"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 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."

"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 feature I found most valuable in Micro Focus ALM Octane is its ability to integrate with the CI/CD stack."

"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."

"With an Octane project, we have our automation, our requirements, our tests, our pipeline into build-and-deploy, and the ability to identify problem areas. It makes things quicker because it's more along the lines of an automated process."

"I like the fact that you can use it on top of Jira."

"It is a very scalable solution."

More OpenText Software Delivery Management pros

"Polarion ALM is excellent for tracking who is working on what and how many people are involved in a project."

"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."

"Polarion ALM helps us better structure our customer requirements, and we can also validate the specs of our products against those. If anything changes on our side, we see the impact, and we can see the effect If a customer changes requirements."

"Polarion ALM delivers both document views and table views simultaneously and organizes configurations according to norms and standards."

"The solution offers good integration."

"It is a very stable solution."

"The most valuable feature is the function of the ALM system."

"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."

More Polarion ALM pros

Cons

"What could be improved in Micro Focus ALM Octane is its integration with Jira."

"Technical support can be slow."

"Updating items, sorting, bulk updates—these things could have a bit more flexibility, but it's still possible to do them."

"The cluster architecture that we implemented was server to server communication: Octane application to Elasticsearch and Elasticsearch to another Elasticsearch service. Recently, we found this is a security gap. The Octane application is interacting with Elasticsearch server, but that was missing from the requirements and prerequisites in the setup. The Micro Focus team has not given advice on how to implement authentication-based communication between Octane to Elasticsearch, and we found it as a gap later, then our security team asked us to fix that gap. So, there was a lot of time spent on rework."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More OpenText Software Delivery Management cons

"The weak point of Polarion ALM software is about reporting and time for extraction of the data...The quality of reporting needs to improve."

"The tool needs to improve its planning. It also needs to add more integrations."

"The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing features that are common in web-based applications."

"The configuration aspect of the solution is not easy. A person needs a lot of programming knowledge in order to successfully handle the job."

"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."

"The ease-of-use could be improved a little."

"One of Polarion's shortcomings would be planning. It can handle plans, but the planning feature is very basic."

"We use PTC Windchill, and Polarion ALM doesn't have native integration, so we had to purchase the connector to integrate it with Polarion ALM. We still haven't implemented it."

More Polarion ALM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 tool's price is extremely high."

"I would say that it is an affordable product. There is an annual service fee, which is one of the additional payments to be made apart from the standard licensing costs attached to the solution."

"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."

More OpenText Software Delivery Management pricing and cost advice

"Software for medical devices is always expensive."

"It is an expensive product."

"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."

"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."

"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

24%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

28%

Computer Software Company

11%

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	32

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	12

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?

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...

What do you like most about Polarion ALM?

It is a very stable solution.

What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?

The backlog management for Agile in Polarion ALM could be improved or enhanced in future releases. What is missing is that if you have a hierarchy in your backlog with epics, features, and user sto...

What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?

We are in our product development using Polarion ALM's functionalities. I am a power user, partly responsible for configuring the tool. We are using it for many things. The idea was to go for a req...

Jira vs OpenText Software Delivery Management

Comparisons

Compared 42% of the time

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Compared 27% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs OpenText Software Delivery Management

Compared 8% of the time

Rally Software vs OpenText Software Delivery Management

Compared 5% of the time

ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management vs OpenText Software Delivery Management

Compared 3% of the time

More OpenText Software Delivery Management Competitors

Codebeamer vs Polarion ALM

Compared 30% of the time

Jira vs Polarion ALM

Compared 20% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Polarion ALM

Compared 14% of the time

Jama Connect vs Polarion ALM

Compared 7% of the time

OpenText Application Quality Management vs Polarion ALM

Compared 2% of the time

More Polarion ALM Competitors

Product Reports

OpenText Software Delivery Management

Download OpenText Software Delivery Management product report

OpenText Software Delivery Management report

Polarion ALM

Download Polarion ALM product report

Also Known As

Micro Focus ALM Octane, Micro Focus Octane

No data available

Overview

OpenText Software Delivery Management provides application lifecycle management with Agile and Waterfall support. It features intuitive interfaces, CI/CD integration, automated testing, and robust reporting, improving project management efficiency and usability.

Designed to enhance teams' productivity and streamline processes, OpenText Software Delivery Management integrates seamlessly with Agile methodologies. Its comprehensive backlog and requirements management, user stories, and test management make it a complete tool for managing the development lifecycle. The platform aligns with DevOps, providing traceability and extensive customization options. Traceability from requirements to deployments is enhanced, making it easier for teams to track progress. It offers integration with popular tools like Jenkins and JIRA, ensuring a unified approach to continuous delivery and testing management.

What key features does OpenText Software Delivery Management include?

Versatile across browsers with consistent performance.
Seamless CI/CD integration for smooth development processes.
Intuitive interface aiding in efficiency and ease of use.
Comprehensive backlog management ensures organized prioritization.
Automated testing aligns with Agile and DevOps principles.

What benefits can users expect when evaluating OpenText Software Delivery Management?

Enhanced traceability from inception to delivery.
Improved project management efficiency through streamlined processes.
Robust reporting capabilities offering detailed insights.
Increased flexibility in customization enabling tailored experiences.
Predictive analytics for better decision-making.

OpenText Software Delivery Management is implemented across technology-focused industries, supporting Agile processes like requirements management and defect tracking. Organizations use it to standardize development workflows and optimize continuous delivery integration, choosing it for its ability to support both Agile and Waterfall methodologies within application lifecycle management.

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

OpenText Software Delivery Management vs. Polarion ALM