Bacula Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

Bacula Systems and IBM are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. Bacula Systems is ranked #27 with an average rating of 10.0, while IBM is ranked #16 with an average rating of 7.1. Bacula Systems holds a 0.8% mindshare in BRS, compared to IBM’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Bacula Systems users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Bacula Enterprise

Read 10 Bacula Enterprise reviews

1,094 Views
939 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Protect

Read 149 IBM Spectrum Protect reviews

4,841 Views
3,695 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Bacula Enterprise

IBM Spectrum Protect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect and Bacula Enterprise compete in the data protection category. Based on user reviews, IBM Spectrum Protect is favored for deployment and customer service, while Bacula Enterprise is preferred for pricing and feature robustness.

Features: Users praise IBM Spectrum Protect for its comprehensive data backup and recovery features, scalability, and reliability. Bacula Enterprise stands out for its flexible and customizable backup solutions, extensive platform support, and advanced scheduling capabilities.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Protect users mention improvements needed in documentation quality, system setup complexity, and a steep initial learning curve. Bacula Enterprise users point to the need for enhanced technical support, better integration capabilities, and more effective user support structures.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Protect users commend the straightforward deployment process and professional customer service. Bacula Enterprise users report a more technical deployment requiring specialized knowledge but value its extensive documentation. Customer service received mixed reviews for Bacula Enterprise.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect users find it pricier with a slower ROI due to higher initial setup costs. Bacula Enterprise offers cost-effectiveness and faster ROI, seen as a budget-friendly option with competitive features. Despite higher costs, IBM's feature set and support merit consideration for more extensive enterprise needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

January 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Bacula Enterprise

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

27th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Backup (18th)

IBM Spectrum Protect

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

16th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

149

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

Roni Alvarenga Ferraresso

Director of Information Technology and Telecommunications at Câmara Municipal de Campinas

Easy to use with many useful plugins and extremely helpful technical support

A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed. I would also like a mobile application to manage the Bacula Enterprise environment where I could perform backups and restores directly from my cell phone or tablet. Relying solely on a desktop is a bit frustrating as its GUI isn't exactly responsive. They need a clearer and faster restore screen to get the information about the data we want to restore; it's a little uncomfortable to find the files to restore on the current screens.

Read full review

Syed Habib

Head of Infrastructure Security (S.A.V.P) at EXIM Bank Ltd

Manageable and comprehensive and integrates robust backup features for core banking

It's adequate for my core banking, however, I am looking for another solution for all systems. It is not compatible with other operating systems like Windows or Linux, and lacks a consolidated dashboard from Browser Spectrum. This is why I am searching for another solution. The product also lacks any centralized graphical user interface (GUI), such as Jarek Pod, and I am limited to using a console-based text user interface, which my local partner handles completely.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."

"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."

"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."

"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."

"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."

"Bacula is pretty stable."

"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."

"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."

"The licensing isn't very clear. They should work to simply or clarify the cost structure."

"Some of the people in our group, like our DBAs and non-technical people, can restore some stuff themselves via Spectrum Protect. That is how simple it is."

"Their GUI has improved quite a bit. It's made the solution a lot simpler and less complex."

"We have a very good team of administrators who know the product perfectly and are able to manage it on a day-to-day basis."

"It helps our customers protect their data, keep it long-term, and feel pretty secure about it, basically sleeping well at night."

"The fact that we can take the backup straight onto tape is the most valuable feature."

"Support of the IBM X platform and the backup data replication to DR are the most valuable features."

"High availability (HA): It is one of the best features."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pros

Cons

"The initial setup could be a bit easier."

"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."

"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."

"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."

"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."

"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."

"Bacula needs a graphical user interface because, for administrators, the command-line interface is okay, but for the average user it is not very easy."

"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."

"The main admin console from the UI cannot do anything in the product. It just allows us to maintain, maybe, 30% to 40%. For the rest, we have to use the command line."

"It needs BMR (bare machine recovery) solutions for both Windows and Linux systems."

"Replication services would be nice. If these could be enhanced to be always on so multiple storage backup services could be added as a cluster pool. This would provide a better availability service."

"IBM Spectrum Protect is not a very user-friendly tool."

"Its management part can be better and simplified. It is kind of a beast as compared to Commvault or Veeam, but they are more user-friendly. They are also easier to learn, whereas Spectrum Protect definitely takes time. They should simplify it. Our teams are pretty comfortable with it because we have been using it for a long time, but from the perspective of a new user who is evaluating or using this solution, it is definitely more complex in terms of manageability. Its monitoring could be improved so that it can even monitor the jobs that are scheduled by external schedulers. There are situations where a database team might decide to use their own schedulers, but currently, Spectrum Protect is not able to catch those jobs in the Operation Manager console."

"Its price can be better. It is very expensive. Its interface is very old and not user friendly. They can improve its interface. Their support can also be better. My clients are not very satisfied with the support because they are not really quick."

"Technical support could be improved."

"It's adequate for my core banking, however, I am looking for another solution for all systems. It is not compatible with other operating systems like Windows or Linux, and lacks a consolidated dashboard from Browser Spectrum."

More IBM Spectrum Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a perpetual license."

"This is an open-source solution."

"It's very complicated. Licensing is a pain."

"One can go with either a PVU licensing model or a capacity based licensing model. Either solution does not block the usage, if over used."

"At scale, the consumption license (per TB) is very expensive."

"You need to put it in a PoC and test it out if you can."

"I don't have an idea about the pricing. They send that over to someone else, but I know that one of the issues they had was the licensing costs. I don't think they were happy with how they were charged."

"The licensing fees are on a yearly basis, which for us it is about R400,000 (approximately $27,000 USD)."

"We are paying for support and maintenance on a monthly basis."

"We have been at our size for a few years. We are not really looking to battle the licensing costs, as this is our primary system."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

University

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bacula Enterprise?

Bacula is more expensive than various other solutions. It’s almost completely commercial now. Products like Veeam software are much more expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Bacula Enterprise?

Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Bacula Enterprise?

The last scenario in which I used Bacula was for a customer who needed some open-source tool which could support encryption at that time. We managed to convince the customer to use Bacula to deploy...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Protect?

IBM Spectrum Protect is stable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Protect?

For my company, the tool is affordable and reasonable, but most people don't know that. People only see one major price for the tool, which runs into millions, so they would always say that it is a...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?

The technical team's service depends on where the support service is located. Some products are not included in IBM itself, but external companies are developing some solutions for IBM. I think the...

See all answers

Comparisons

Bareos vs Bacula Enterprise

Compared 55% of the time

UrBackup vs Bacula Enterprise

Compared 17% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Bacula Enterprise

Compared 13% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Bacula Enterprise

Compared 3% of the time

Veritas Backup Exec vs Bacula Enterprise

Compared 1% of the time

More Bacula Enterprise Competitors

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 19% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 18% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 10% of the time

Rubrik vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Backup and Recovery

January 2025

Download Bacula Enterprise product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect

January 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Protect product report

Also Known As

No data available

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

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Bacula Systems

IBM

Overview

Bacula Enterprise is a highly scalable, especially robust and secure data backup and recovery software. Its unique low cost subscription model empowers data centers to truly escape data volume price traps. With a high degree of flexibility and customizability, Bacula offers native integration with a wide range of hypervisors, databases, file systems, cloud interfaces and containers. High numbers of enterprise organizations worldwide (incl. NASA, Bank of Austria, Swisscom or Sky PLC) have adopted Bacula Enterprise backup software in mission critical environments because of its advanced features and ability to handle high data volume at very low cost.

IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) is a data protection platform that gives enterprises a single point of control and administration for backup and recovery. It is the flagship product in the IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) family. It enables reliable, cost effective backups and fast recovery for virtual, physical and cloud environments of all sizes.

Sample Customers

NASA, SwissCom, Navisite, Turner Studios, Bank Austria, Caixa Bank, SdV Plurimedia, Leibniz University Hannover, Zeta Global, Tricore, NetLog, Siemens, LocaWeb, wbsGo, itesys, Queens School of Computing, Escrypt.

CERN, Einstein Healthcare, Nyherji, Allianz Australia, TZM, ABT Online, NCT, Kindred Healthcare Inc., Cobalt Iron, TransGrid, Baptist Health of Northeast Florida, Cash America, Piedmont Healthcare, RWGV, Arkansas Tech University, British Columbia Institute of Technology

Buyer's Guide

Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

January 2025

Free Report: Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

Find out what your peers are saying about Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Spectrum Protect and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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