We performed a comparison between Microsoft Azure DevOps and OpenText ALM Octane based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Most developers and project managers choose the Microsoft tools to begin with because of familiarity, and these new tools are almost an extension of the tools you're already familiar with. There's a lot of knowledge transfer, which helps, rather than bringing in a new product line."
"It's a pretty problem-free solution."
"The tool's most efficient feature is the integration of its services in one place. It is an easy-to-use product that improves productivity. Microsoft Azure DevOps is also user-friendly. Its documentation is clear and can be found on Google."
"The most valuable feature is that it brings order to our projects, and we know the status of each one at every moment."
"We can track everything from the requirements stage to the production stage."
"Two of the most valuable features include the integrated project management suite, which consolidates source code and project management in a single location, and its powerful reporting capabilities."
"I think the most usable thing is that you can follow the whole progress of the development process. This makes it very useful for us."
"What I like the most about this product is that it's free and it's secure."
"The most valuable feature of Micro Focus ALM Octane is the reports. We are able to do customization."
"We looked at all the market-leading tools, but we did not find anything quite as comprehensive as ALM Octane. When I say comprehensive, it's not just a single tool for Agile planning, backlog management release, sprint planning, etc., but it also has a built-in, comprehensive quality management module. It also has pipelines where we can hook up with our DevOps ecosystem/toolchain."
"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."
"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The solution natively supports Agile-Waterfall hybrid software development at an enterprise scale. This is very important to us. Because even though the company wishes to go Agile, we still have projects which follow a Waterfall methodology. In order for us to accommodate both, we needed some sort of hybrid system. Because if we are using a fully Agile system, then the reporting might not be correctly extracted."
"It’s easy to set up."
"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."
"I like the fact that you can use it on top of Jira."
"Its price can also be reduced. It would be great if they are a little bit more competitive in terms of pricing because many open-source products are currently available in the market."
"Microsoft could focus on refining the reporting and dashboard elements of Azure DevOps to improve it."
"If they could build up requirement traceability metrics, then it would be great."
"We are currently in the process of moving all of our on-prem to the cloud platform. We are trying to make that move and host the majority of our DevOps services in the cloud because the cloud is where most of the things are going nowadays. However, the process of this transfer is not straightforward, and it could be a lot easier. Microsoft hasn't provided the maturity for migration tools. It could be a lot easier in that respect. I want to see them continue to advance the API capabilities. They could add some more robust functionality to the administrative layer within ADO services. There are a lot of configuration elements that you need to take care of at the organization level and the project configuration level from an administrative capacity. When you're dealing with process templates and things of that nature, you have to do them all manually. Being able to automate some of that using scripts or API functionality would be really nice."
"The solution should have fewer updates."
"With Microsoft, I would prefer to have more test plans. It's very difficult to find individual test plan module training."
"When comparing with Jira, I find that the task management capabilities in Azure DevOps are not yet fully comprehensive and should be enhanced."
"I would like to see improvement in the metrics and the dependencies."
"When I manage projects that are being created in ALM, I have a standard template, but I don't have a template for them in Octane. I literally have to create the project from the ground up every time, which for an administrator, is a nightmare solution"
"Development of extensions or connections to GitHub actions could be better. Better integration with Azure DevOps would also help."
"We’d like to see Platform One/Iron Bank compliant containers."
"Technical support can be slow."
"The reporting needs to be improved and allow for customization. I want to build my own widgets, but I don't want to use the ones already in the system. I want to build mine from scratch."
"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."
"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 elements in filtering need to be improved, meaning the number of filters I can use in widgets or in the grid views in parallel. There's a limitation which bothers a lot of our users. Filtering in text, or having a complex filter is limited. In a given field, for example, I can use a filter only once. I cannot say, 'Include the values 1, 2, and 3, and exclude value 17.' This is not possible but we have requested it often."
Microsoft Azure DevOps is ranked 2nd in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites with 127 reviews while OpenText ALM Octane is ranked 5th in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites with 38 reviews. Microsoft Azure DevOps is rated 8.2, while OpenText ALM Octane is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Microsoft Azure DevOps writes "Allows us to deploy code to production without releasing certain features immediately and agile project management capabilities offer resource-leveling". On the other hand, the top reviewer of OpenText ALM Octane writes "Reporting engine, widgets, and dashboards are a huge plus, and powerful REST interface means we can interact with other tools". Microsoft Azure DevOps is most compared with GitLab, Jira, TFS, Rally Software and Octopus Deploy, whereas OpenText ALM Octane is most compared with Jira, OpenText ALM / Quality Center, Rally Software, GitLab and Codebeamer. See our Microsoft Azure DevOps vs. OpenText ALM Octane report.
See our list of best Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites vendors and best Enterprise Agile Planning Tools vendors.
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Sadly, I have no experience with Micro Focus ALM, however, such facts may well hint at the answer to your question. By contrast, Azure DevOps has gained an incredible following, based on accelerating solid reputation, leaving many competitors behind. Also, as has often been stated, "No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft." That said, there are fact-based comparisons, which actually rate Azure DevOps higher (e.g., www.trustradius.com).