Jira Software vs. OpenText Silk Central

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Jira Software
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
JIRA Software is an application lifecycle management solution for software development teams. It allows users to create, prioritize and track the progress of tasks across multiple team members, and offers a wide range of integrations. It is offered via the cloud and local servers.
$10
per month
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
Jira SoftwareOpenText Silk Central
Editions & Modules
Standard
$7
Per User Per Month
Premium
$14
Per User Per Month
Free
Free
Enterprise
Contact Sales
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Jira SoftwareOpenText Silk Central
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Jira SoftwareOpenText Silk Central
Considered Both Products
Jira Software

No answer on this topic

OpenText Silk Central
Chose OpenText Silk Central
We had evaluated, for example:

  • IBM Collaborate Suite - it is way too complicated and the learning curve is too high.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Jira SoftwareOpenText Silk Central
Test Management
Comparison of Test Management features of Product A and Product B
Jira Software
-
Ratings
OpenText Silk Central
8.0
1 Ratings
1% below category average
Centralized test management00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Manage test hosts and schedules00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Map tests to user stories00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Test execution reporting00 Ratings6.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Jira SoftwareOpenText Silk Central
Small Businesses
Polarion ALM
Polarion ALM
Score 9.2 out of 10
BrowserStack
BrowserStack
Score 8.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Polarion ALM
Polarion ALM
Score 9.2 out of 10
OpenText ALM/Quality Center
OpenText ALM/Quality Center
Score 7.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Polarion ALM
Polarion ALM
Score 9.2 out of 10
OpenText ALM/Quality Center
OpenText ALM/Quality Center
Score 7.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Jira SoftwareOpenText Silk Central
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(187 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(35 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(28 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
5.3
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(23 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.7
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Jira SoftwareOpenText Silk Central
Likelihood to Recommend
Atlassian
The Jira software works well for managing scrum boards and allocating resources to a task. When your Epics and Issues are set up properly, it can give you a good idea of where your team stands and the trajectory of your project. It is not the ideal solution if you need to provide documentation and support to people outside of your product teams or organization. It would benefit from having a public documentation or repository feature.
Read full review
OpenText
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.
Read full review
Pros
Atlassian
  • Running sprints and tracking progress of roadmap, epics, story, task and subtask
  • The user interface is great. It allows tables inside details, have common shortcuts and clean design.
  • Can create custom dashboards and can view data in multiple ways
  • Advanced access rights based on role
Read full review
OpenText
  • 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.
Read full review
Cons
Atlassian
  • Management of the software is very difficult at times, although has improved.
  • Ability to manage resources is really non-existent, there are some plugins but they are ALL buggy (I've tested them all).
  • Better integration with Trello, would love to see this happen. Right now it's very clumsy.
Read full review
OpenText
  • 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.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Atlassian
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.
Read full review
OpenText
No answers on this topic
Usability
Atlassian
JIRA Software is a pretty complex tool. We have a project manager for JIRA who onboarded us, created our board, and taught us the basics. I think it would have been pretty overwhelming to learn without her. JIRA offers so much functionality that I'm not aware of -- I constantly need to Google or ask others about existing features. Also, although they are all under the Atlassian umbrella, I find it difficult to switch between JIRA Software and Confluence.
Read full review
OpenText
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Atlassian
Our JIRA support is handled internally by members of our Product Support team. It is not supported by a 3rd party. Our internal support will always sent out notifications for downtime which is usually done on the weekend unless it is required to fix a bug/issue that is affecting the entire company. Downtime is typically 3-4 hours and then once the maintenance is complete, another broadcast email is sent out informing the user community that the system is now available for use.
Read full review
OpenText
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Atlassian
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.
Read full review
OpenText
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Atlassian
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.
Read full review
OpenText
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Atlassian
Jira Software has more integrations and has more features than many of its competitors. While some of its competitors do have better UI/UX than Jira Software, they have improved this greatly over time. Atlassian also acquired Trello years ago, so that adds better user interfaces to the system. They do also offer a pretty in-depth library of how to customize the platform that others don't.
Read full review
OpenText
We had evaluated, for example:
  • 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.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Atlassian
  • Jira has positively made our company's daily activities much better organized
  • With Jira we can track progress and follow up on tasks
  • Jira has great reporting tools which aggregate various data and give us a good overview of our teams capacity
Read full review
OpenText
  • 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.
Read full review
ScreenShots