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OpenText Software Delivery Management vs Polarion ALM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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
9th
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
8th
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
5th
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of OpenText Software Delivery Management is 5.6%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 4.9%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Polarion ALM4.9%
OpenText Software Delivery Management5.6%
Other89.5%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

PE
Senior Test Automation Specialist at APG
Generating audit evidence effortlessly saves time and money
OpenText ALM Octane is a new product with full development ongoing, where new ideas are launched regularly. Its ability to generate audit evidence with a single click is a significant advantage, as it saves considerable time and money compared to manual processes. This efficiency is especially valuable for audits required by financial regulators.
LasseMikkonen - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at byte
Has provided mature traceability and configuration features while supporting complex product development for mid-to-large companies
Polarion ALM can learn from Atlassian tools a lot, as the usability is not the best, and it is really narrowly focused on requirements management only. For example, if you want to do testing and test result management with it, it is very limited. Jama Connect has similar limitations, and both should really focus on developing the integrations and extendability. For example, Jama Connect does not even have an extension marketplace, whereas Polarion has a small one. However, compared to the Atlassian Marketplace where you can get whatever applications for whatever price, it is a totally different ballgame. I would highly recommend Polarion ALM add more AI features to it. I know they have started to do something, but for example, I have been developing widgets for IBM DOORS Next, AI widgets, so that you can write and analyze requirements with the AI, and I have also done the same for Jira, creating a couple of Jira applications in the marketplace as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The platform's most valuable feature is pipeline integration or continuous integration services."
"If you compare it to Jira, for instance, it has a lot more functionality."
"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."
"Micro Focus ALM Octane has been exemplary, and as a project manager, since the day I've started using it, it has been wonderful."
"The interface is user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature of ALM Octane is an easy implementation of Agile projects."
"The dashboards and metric reporting are valuable features."
"Octane has reduced manual testing time in our organization."
"The technical support is quite good."
"The initial setup of this solution was straightforward, and there were not too many problems with it."
"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."
"Polarion ALM is excellent for tracking who is working on what and how many people are involved in a project."
"The tool helped us to more effectively and efficiently gather and structure the information (requirements, test plans, project management data, etc.), and share it with the involved stakeholders in a safe and change-controlled manner."
"Even though Polarion is quite expensive, it's quite a good solution for medical device development in general, especially for software development."
"Polarion ALM delivers both document views and table views simultaneously and organizes configurations according to norms and standards."
"The technical support is quite good."
 

Cons

"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."
"Updating items, sorting, bulk updates—these things could have a bit more flexibility, but it's still possible to do them."
"One of the things that a lot of our project teams have complained about is the simplicity of reporting that's available in Octane, and that they have to export data out of it in order to create the types of reports that their PMO or their client wants to see."
"I do not know whether it is because we used an existing server, but sometimes the solution would be slow."
"The reporting side of ALM Octane could do with a few areas of improvement. There is not enough flexibility in the way that we can cut up the data to report on certain things."
"Improvements could be made by way of additional integrations across the lifecycle."
"The reporting is lacking from a requirements matrix and a traceability perspective."
"It could use just some small improvements. I would like additional features, like planning features, user story mapping, or connection to collaboration tools."
"I also recently suggested that CMS consider incorporating generative artificial intelligence into the system."
"I don't think that this solution scales well. It means that we have to split our project and use something with fewer objects in it."
"The interface for this solution needs to be made more user-friendly to provide a better user experience."
"The solution's editing capabilities need improvement."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing features that are common in web-based applications."
"The planning and task management aspects of the solution were not that easy."
"One of Polarion's shortcomings would be planning. It can handle plans, but the planning feature is very basic."
 

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."
"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."
"Going forward, I think we will want to explore adding more 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 solution has reduced our testing costs."
"The product is highly priced compared to other tools."
"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 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."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
"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."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"It is an expensive product."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
29%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise32
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
 

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 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 needs improvement with Micro Focus ALM 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...
What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?
Polarion ALM can learn from Atlassian tools a lot, as the usability is not the best, and it is really narrowly focused on requirements management only. For example, if you want to do testing and te...
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...
What advice do you have for others considering Polarion ALM?
The pricing of Polarion ALM and IBM ELM is pretty much aligned. They are not at the same level, but I would say aligned according to the capabilities of the tools, with DOORS being more expensive b...
 

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 Software Delivery Management vs. Polarion ALM and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.