If your IT organization runs OpenText PPM, there is a good chance nobody chose it recently. It was chosen as Kintana, or as Mercury IT Governance Center, or as HP PPM Center, and it has been upgraded, patched and customized ever since. The question on the table now is usually a practical one: an upgrade is due, OpenText is proposing a move to SaaS, or the renewal needs a business case, and somebody has asked whether the money would be better spent on something else. This guide answers that for a US IT PMO, including the cases where staying is the right call.
Key takeaways
- OpenText PPM and Micro Focus PPM are the same product. It began as Kintana, became Mercury IT Governance Center in 2003, HP PPM Center after HP bought Mercury in 2006, moved to Micro Focus in 2017 and to OpenText when that acquisition closed on January 31, 2023.
- OpenText does not publish a price list. The product is quoted, on premises or as SaaS, and the cost of keeping a heavily customized installation current often exceeds the license itself.
- The platforms that genuinely replace its IT demand and governance layer are ServiceNow SPM, Broadcom Clarity and Planview. Triskell and Celoxis fit a lighter mid-market rebuild.
- If the real problem is that nobody can show which initiatives are funded and whether they can be staffed, a focused portfolio workspace settles that decision while the platform choice is still open.
Is Micro Focus PPM the same as OpenText PPM?
Yes. OpenText Project and Portfolio Management is the product previously sold as Micro Focus PPM, and before that as HP PPM Center. OpenText completed its acquisition of Micro Focus on January 31, 2023, and the product was rebranded without a change of code base. Documentation, community threads and job postings still use all three names, so treat them as one product when you compare vendors.
The longer lineage matters because it explains what the product is good at. Mercury Interactive bought Kintana in June 2003 for about $225 million and sold it as Mercury IT Governance Center. HP acquired Mercury in 2006 and renamed it HP PPM Center. When Hewlett Packard Enterprise sold most of its software business to Micro Focus in September 2017, the PPM product went with it. At every stage it was an IT governance tool: demand intake, request workflows, approvals, project and program tracking, and financials for the IT budget. That heritage is why IT organizations with strict change and approval processes adopted it, and it is also why business-side portfolios often sit awkwardly inside it.
| Year | Owner | Product name |
|---|---|---|
| Before 2003 | Kintana | Kintana IT governance suite |
| 2003 | Mercury Interactive | Mercury IT Governance Center |
| 2006 | HP | HP Project and Portfolio Management Center |
| 2017 | Micro Focus | Micro Focus PPM |
| 2023 | OpenText | OpenText Project and Portfolio Management |
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Why IT PMOs start looking at OpenText PPM alternatives
Almost nobody leaves because the product cannot do the job. People leave because of what it costs to keep doing it. The patterns are consistent enough to name.
The upgrade is a project in itself. Long-lived installations carry years of custom request types, workflows and reports. Each upgrade means retesting all of them, and the effort estimate is often the moment the organization asks whether the same money would buy a replacement instead.
The SaaS move forces a rethink. OpenText offers the product as SaaS as well as on premises. Moving is not a lift and shift when the installation depends on database-level customizations, so a SaaS proposal tends to trigger the same comparison a replacement would.
The business never came in. The IT side lives in the tool. Marketing, operations and transformation initiatives are tracked in a spreadsheet next to it, so the portfolio view leadership sees is assembled by hand every month.
The people who built it have left. The administrator who understood the workflow engine retired or moved on, and every change now goes through a contractor. That is a real operational risk, and a legitimate reason to look.
What are the best OpenText PPM alternatives?
The best OpenText PPM alternative depends on what you need to keep. If IT demand and approvals are the core, ServiceNow SPM is the natural replacement when your service desk already runs on ServiceNow, and Broadcom Clarity when portfolio financials drive the decision. Planview fits an enterprise portfolio that spans IT and business work. Triskell and Celoxis suit a lighter mid-market rebuild.
We sell one of the products in the table below, so read the last column as our own view and test it. Ownership is listed for every row because this market has consolidated heavily, and several names that older comparison lists still treat as independent now belong to one vendor.
| Tool | Owner | How it is priced | Where it beats OpenText PPM | Where it does not |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ServiceNow SPM | ServiceNow | Quoted, often inside a wider ServiceNow agreement | IT demand already arrives as ServiceNow records, so intake, delivery and changes share one platform | Business-side initiatives that never touch the service desk, and a platform team that has to configure it |
| Broadcom Clarity | Broadcom | Quoted | Portfolio financials, cost planning and chargeback at enterprise scale | Another heavyweight suite with its own services dependency |
| Planview | Private, backed by TPG and TA Associates | Quoted, role based seats | Portfolios that span IT, product and transformation, plus resource management depth | Cost and implementation weight comparable to what you are leaving |
| Triskell | Independent | Quoted | Configurable governance without a custom workflow engine to maintain | A smaller vendor, with fewer ITSM integrations out of the box |
| Celoxis | Independent | Published per user pricing | Mid-market budget and a faster path to live | Less depth for complex IT demand and approval workflows |
| Portfolio Hub | Independent | Per workspace, published | A ranked, funded portfolio and a capacity plan by role, owned by the PMO, in one planning round | Not a request workflow engine or a timesheet system |
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If ServiceNow is the front runner, our ServiceNow SPM alternatives page covers when that platform is the right home for the portfolio and when it is not. For the two other enterprise suites, the Clarity PPM alternatives and Planview alternatives guides go into each in depth, including which products Planview now owns.
How much does OpenText PPM cost?
OpenText does not publish a price for PPM. It is sold as a quoted license or subscription, on premises or as SaaS, and the total depends on the number of users, the modules licensed and the support tier. For a long-running installation, the larger cost is usually not the license but the upgrade testing, customization maintenance and specialist administration needed to keep it current.
That second cost is the one to put on paper before any comparison, because it is the one a replacement actually removes. Every enterprise alternative in the table above is also quoted, so you cannot compare list prices. You can compare the pricing unit, and the unit tells you how each bill will grow.
| Cost line | Staying on OpenText PPM | Moving to an enterprise suite | Moving the decision layer to a workspace |
|---|---|---|---|
| License or subscription | Quoted renewal, on premises or SaaS | Quoted, per named user or role | Published per workspace plan |
| Implementation | Upgrade and retest of existing customizations | Full configuration and data migration project | Loading the initiative register and role list |
| Ongoing administration | Specialist skills in an aging workflow engine | Vendor or partner admin, or a platform team | PMO owned, no admin role |
| What it removes | Nothing, you keep the current estate | The legacy platform, eventually | The monthly spreadsheet rebuild of the portfolio view |
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What replaced HP PPM Center?
Nothing replaced it inside its own vendor line: HP PPM Center is still sold and supported today, under the OpenText name. What organizations replace it with when they leave is usually ServiceNow SPM for IT demand tied to the service desk, Broadcom Clarity or Planview for enterprise portfolio financials and resources, or a lighter portfolio tool when the heavy workflow layer is no longer needed.
When staying on OpenText PPM is the right call
A comparison that only ever finds reasons to leave is not worth reading. There are organizations where the switch costs more than it returns.
If your change and approval workflows are auditable controls, and your auditors rely on the evidence the PPM system produces, a migration has to carry that evidence across intact. That is doable, but it is work, and it is the item most often missing from replacement budgets. Before you retire anything, map which controls depend on PPM approvals and where the historical evidence will live, ideally in a system that keeps audit evidence mapped to the control it proves, so the next audit does not start with a search through an archived database.
Staying also makes sense when the installation is stable, the people who run it are still there, and the business side has no appetite to enter work into any tool. In that case the cheaper move is to keep OpenText PPM for IT demand and fix the part that is actually broken, which is usually the portfolio decision itself.
Migration checklist before you sign anything
Whichever direction you go, run these checks on your own data rather than a demo portfolio. They are the ones that decide whether a replacement finishes on time.
- Request types in use. Count the request types and workflows that were actually used in the last twelve months. Most long-lived installations carry dozens nobody touches, and none of those need migrating.
- History you must keep. Decide how many years of project and approval history must stay queryable, and where. That single decision changes the migration estimate more than any other.
- Integrations. List every feed into and out of PPM: finance, HR, time entry, the service desk. Each one is a line in the new project.
- The decision you need next quarter. Identify the next funding round. If it falls before the new platform can be live, plan how that round will run in the meantime.
- Export on exit. Ask every finalist to export the register, the scores and the history in a format you can open without their help.
That fourth check is where most migrations stall. The platform decision takes two quarters; the next planning round does not wait. You can run that round in a project prioritization tool with a scoring model, a funding line and a capacity plan by role, keep OpenText PPM running for IT demand in the meantime, and take a clear requirements list into the platform decision. The broader shortlist, with every vendor's current owner, is in our comparison of PPM software and project portfolio management tools.