Atlassian Jira is a project management tool, featuring an interactive timeline for mapping work items, dependencies, and releases, Scrum boards for agile teams, and out-of-the-box reports and dashboards.
$9
per month per user
OpenText Silk Central
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Formerly from Micro Focus and earliler from Borland, unified test management with OpenText™ Silk Central drives reuse and efficiency. It gives users the visibility to control application readiness.
N/A
Pricing
Atlassian Jira
OpenText Silk Central
Editions & Modules
Standard
$9
per month per user
Premium
$17
per month per user
Enterprise
Contact Sales
per year
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Atlassian Jira
OpenText Silk Central
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Higher volume teams may qualify buyers for a discount.
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Atlassian Jira
OpenText Silk Central
Considered Both Products
Atlassian Jira
No answer on this topic
OpenText Silk Central
Verified User
Professional
Chose OpenText Silk Central
We had evaluated, for example:
IBM Collaborate Suite - it is way too complicated and the learning curve is too high.
Jira facilitates software development, bug tracking, and sprints. It's ideal for structured workflows, issue management, and customer communication. However, more straightforward tools might be more efficient for highly creative, unstructured tasks or tiny, agile teams with quick visual overviews. Jira's complexity can be overkill for basic task lists.
We didn't just select Borland Silk Central randomly. In the selection process, we actually evaluated in total 26 available test management tools in the market. We sent surveys to all potential users in the department to collect their wish list of our next management tool, converted them to a criteria list, and used that list to evaluate all 26 tools. We reduced the possible candidate tools to five and organized a small committee to pick the final three. Top management then checked their price tags and selected Borland Silk Central. Based on this evaluation process, I would say Borland Silk Central is suitable to an organization which has no more than 60 testers; needs both manual tests and automated tests; needs on-line support; needs a low learning curve and has a limited budget. My personal view is that this tool reaches the balance points among ease-of-use, budget and support.
Integration of tools like Bitbucket, Github, etc., has made it easier to track the code changes, pull requests, and branches linked to the respective ticket.
The detailed tracking system in JIRA has helped the teams prioritize and understand the project tasks and issues.
JIRA's project tracking board helps you keep track of the project, its flow, and expectations in a structured format.
Borland Silk Central is good for the users to associate test requirements, test cases, execution plans and test reports together. Each asset (test case, requirement, etc...) provides links for the users to jump to other assets in a click, and the users can jump back and forth between two assets.
Borland Silk Central is also good in test automation. Although Micro Focus does provide a client tool for test automation, the users don't really need it to automate the tests. In our case, we are using Python to automate the tests and use a batch file to launch tests, and in Borland Silk Central we just call that batch file from server side. The test result is automatically fed back to Silk server.
Micro Focus also publishes the schema of the database behind Borland Silk Central, so it is very easy to extend its function beyond its original design. Moreover, because its schema is published, we can easily retrieve and process its data for business intelligence purpose.
On the other hand, the plugins of Borland Silk Central with third-party tools are programmed poorly. In our case, the plugins for JIRA have a lot of limitations and were almost unusable in our test environment. (They did improve the plugins a little bit later, however.)
The tech support people are located in UK, so frequently it is difficult to get a hold of these guys due to different time zones. Also, most of them obviously don't have enough experience and sometimes drove us nuts in emergency situations.
The last thing I feel is that Micro Focus possibly doesn't provide enough manpower to maintain Borland Silk Central. There are tons of feature requests for Borland Silk Central pending there. Although they have frequent hot fixes every few months, they don't digest these requests quick enough.
This is because Jira Software generates a huge profit for an affordable price. Having a tool that makes team management transparent and effective is very valuable.
In addition, the renewal of Jira Software and all Atlassian tools is predictable and clear, as the prices are published on the Atlassian website and there is no pyramid of intermediaries.
The interface is simple and easy to use if you have some experience with it. Configuration is also logical most of the time. However, less experienced users tend to find themselves lost in some tasks - usually complex project configuration- but sometimes simple things, such as seeing why a user can't move issues in a workflow. Jira configuration requires a good amount of experience - and even experienced users often resort to documentation. It's a tool that's easy to use if you know what you're doing and where to find the proper documentation, but novice users tend to find it challenging.
Did not face any issues and whenever they plan maintanance they update all of us very well in advance also so in that view we are good with the product stability.
Performance is really good though it holds lot of data it loads quickly especially search operation also get the results very quickly as needed hence its good
I have not had a chance to contact JIRA's customer support. It does offer extensive documentation, although it often feels too technical for me. There is also a JIRA training app that lets you take little lessons and quizzes on different areas (e.g., JIRA basics, agile). I did find it a helpful way to teach myself.
Had received training from our own internal user so it was good and also very easy to understand topics and many tasks in the UI are self explanatory and we can do by our own
One of their strong points i stheir documentation. Almost all of the basic set up needed within JIRA is available online through atlassian and its easy to find and very precise. The more critical issues need to be addressed as well and hence the rating of 8 instead of a 9.
Take your time implementing Jira. Make sure you understand how you want to handle your projects and workflows. Investing more time in the implementation can pay off in a long run. It basically took us 5 days to define and implement correctly, but that meant smooth sailing later on.
monday.com cannot be integrated with CI/CD tools, whereas Atlassian Jira integrates with CI/CD tools seamlessly. Atlassian Jira has strong Agile and Scrum support. Coming to monday.com, it has basic agile functionality. But Atlassian Jira has a complex UI, and monday.com has an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface. Overall, Atlassian Jira provides features like Agile project management, DevOps integration, and customizable workflows.
IBM Collaborate Suite - it is way too complicated and the learning curve is too high.
HP Quality Center - it is OK but a little bit expensive.
TestLink, Squash TM and other open source tools: The capabilities of open source tools just can't compare to commercial tools. Although we can modify the source code to improve the tool, we are just test engineers, not developers.
Zephyr: Our testers simply didn't like its UI - too weird.
Atlassian Jira's robust workflow automation has boosted team efficiency, shortening delivery cycles and driving a positive ROI through improved project management.
Its advanced reporting and integration capabilities have enabled data-driven decisions, aligning operations with key business objectives.
However, the steep learning curve can delay adoption, potentially hindering short-term ROI.
Borland Silk Central provides a centralized test platform for multiple test departments in the company, so now all of the departments know what each of them is doing. In turn, all departments can coordinate with each other to reduce the duplicated test items and increase the overall test efficiency.
Also, Borland Silk Central enables the users to publish the test procedure (steps) of each test case so all the users can know how each test case is performed. It is not like what we had before, the test procedures resided in difference place from Excel to Google drive or some other weird locations.
Also, because all departments are using Borland Silk Central, all testers of the departments have better communication regarding testing methods. In the past, the department used different test management tools and it was hard for the testers to understand each other's testing methods.
Finally, because all departments share BorlandSilk Central, they also share the same set of reports published to Atlassian Confluence, so now they use the same set of reports to evaluate the test progress.
