[vassilyk]

At last a comment mentioning alternatives.

Jira is the primary target of the article when it probably should be how people run agile projects, and how organizations tend to struggle findind the most efficient (software development) processes to reach their business goals.

This article could have been written for any similar Jira direct / indirect competitors like you mentioned, and the like of Asana, Trello (Atlassian), Aha, plain old Word, Excel and so many others.

But it wasn't, because it's just easier to pick the elephant in the room and have a go at what remains a great tool when used wisely. Kind of like pen and paper, after all.