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Jama Connect vs OpenText ALM Octane 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

Jama Connect
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Application Requirements Management (4th)
OpenText ALM Octane
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jama Connect is 3.7%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText ALM Octane is 6.0%, 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

Lasse Mikkonen - PeerSpot reviewer
Traceability has improved documentation for auditors and regulators
The collaboration feature in Jama Connect could be improved because it is only used by a limited number of people within an organization due to license costs. For broader collaboration that includes departments like marketing and engineering, many still rely on tools like Slack ( /products/slack-reviews ) or Confluence ( /products/atlassian-confluence-reviews ). Additionally, there are areas where usability and configurability could be enhanced.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"You can get full traceability with any other system. It also includes a test module, and you build the traceability matrix incrementally throughout the development process."
"We use Jama Connect mainly for requirements management."
"The most valuable feature is the single identity provider capability, which simplifies the integration with various platforms, like Google App Store and Microsoft Azure, for providing user access."
"Provides suitable tools for managing regulatory requirements."
"Jama Connect is a good tool for the entire software development cycle."
"The user experience is better than the competition."
"I like Jama Connect because it's easy to use and understand. The widgets are great, and linking is straightforward. The solution is not complex compared to its competitors."
"Traceability is a key differentiator for Jama Connect, especially compared to Jira."
"It's more streamlined because we have it all under one umbrella. And once the business requirements and rules have been created, we can do test cases and apply them to the business rules."
"Octane works well with the Jira portfolio to track the project with two methods: Agile and Waterfall. We can track all the testing in Waterfall or Agile and synchronize it with Agile tools."
"The key feature is the usability. It is fast to learn and easy to use. It's very intuitive to work with. Most of the important functions are available via a few clicks, compared to other tools where I have to open a sub-menu and then a sub-menu and another sub-menu, and then press a button."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The dashboards and metric reporting are valuable features."
"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."
 

Cons

"The user interface could be modernized and the product lacks project management functionalities."
"The solution is expensive."
"The initial setup could be better, it's complicated."
"I think there's room for improvement, especially with the review process. Reviews should be integrated with requirement evaluation instead of being separate from it. The review should not run parallel to the requirement."
"I have inquired about pricing for this solution but have not yet heard anything, so their response time in this regard is something that should be improved."
"There are a few areas where Jama Connect can improve. One suggestion is to enhance the built-in feature of profile generation."
"I believe one of the weak points is the reporting side. You must export inter-readable reports from Jama if you do not use the system as a repository for your design history file. Jama is great if you keep it in Jama, but reporting out requires some customization to get it right."
"The solution is very software-centric, and its validation piece is not time-efficient at all."
"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."
"Promoting it more could help a lot of projects."
"I would like to see the mobile testing improved so that we can simply select a mobile device, then specify what parameters we want, and the testing will be run based on that."
"Improvements could be made by way of additional integrations across the lifecycle."
"Documentation is not clear."
"The biggest problem with ALM Octane is that it's very complex, so it's difficult to use and scale."
"The tool's price is high, making it an area where improvement is high."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"To have a single source for all the requirements and all the change requests our company gets is the most valuable feature. It has also helped us to keep track of reviews."
"If you want to have creative licenses, pricing may be an issue with the licenses, as it can become quite expensive over time to serve many people."
"The cost seems very competitive with other offerings."
"Jama Connect is a little pricy."
"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."
"The price of Micro Focus ALM Octane is too high compared to other solutions."
"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."
"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."
"Going forward, I think we will want to explore adding more licenses."
"The tool's price is extremely high."
"The solution has reduced our testing costs."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
27%
Healthcare Company
10%
Aerospace/Defense Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Jama Connect?
I like Jama Connect because it's easy to use and understand. The widgets are great, and linking is straightforward. The solution is not complex compared to its competitors.
What needs improvement with Jama Connect?
The collaboration feature in Jama Connect could be improved because it is only used by a limited number of people within an organization due to license costs. For broader collaboration that include...
What is your primary use case for Jama Connect?
I primarily work with Jama Connect ( /products/jama-connect-reviews ) for requirements management.
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Micro Focus ALM Octane, Micro Focus Octane
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Deloitte, SpaceX, Omnigon, Delft University
Orange, Airbus, Haufe Group, Kellogg's, Claro, Bon Secours, World Wide Technology
Find out what your peers are saying about Jama Connect vs. OpenText ALM Octane and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,278 professionals have used our research since 2012.
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