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Bacula Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

Bacula Systems and IBM are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. Bacula Systems is ranked #25 with an average rating of 10.0, while IBM is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.2. Bacula Systems holds a 0.9% 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
  • 1,044 Views
  • 904 Comparison Views
90% willing to recommend
IBM Spectrum Protect
Read 149 IBM Spectrum Protect reviews
  • 4,073 Views
  • 3,133 Comparison Views
86% willing to recommend
 

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.

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To learn more, read our detailed Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Report (Updated: April 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Spectrum Protect
April 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
25th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (18th)
IBM Spectrum Protect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
17th
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 April 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Davilson Aguiar - PeerSpot reviewer
Very cost-effective and well organized with good compression
It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company. A managerial user who wants more information beyond the operational technician should be able to access it. It could include greater transparency regarding the volume of data trafficked on the network, as well as the expectation of deduplication. A more practical strategy could come with a backup policy model as a suggestion for both large and small companies. A simple suggestion is to visually implement the backup time as far as your physical media.
Read full review
Syed Habib - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"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."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"Data reduction definitely reduces costs, not only software costs, but from the infrastructure needed."
"We can freeze and start databases for consistent backups."
"Good user interface."
"For initial setup, we started with the blueprints, which were great. The blueprints allowed us to be able to decide if we needed to use small, medium,k or large. Because we are a large environment, we used a large blueprint. Once we followed everything in the blueprint, it was a smooth transition from there."
"It helps our customers protect their data, especially with stuff like ransomware, compliance, and regulatory requirements."
"It is a very good and mature enterprise product. Once it is set up and everything is put in, you don't have to manage it. It actually runs automatically by itself."
"It scales well for the amount of clients that we use with it."
"The archiving feature is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
More IBM Spectrum Protect pros
 

Cons

"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"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."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"They should have a proper technical support team serving the customers and get issues resolved earlier."
"It should have the ability to break down the data that's being backed up. It should have better reporting."
"The version that we had when I first started made it look really bad. We are talking about commands that should have run in two seconds, but instead took four to eight hours. Other components were sluggish."
"There needs to be a bit more automation."
"It has a lot of areas for improvement. Its reporting for job completion or incompletion can be improved. It should also provide a granular recovery, ease of operation, data life cycle management, and media management. It should support a backup in such a format that in case of a disaster, one can start the virtual machine out of the backup itself. Its reliability can also be better. It is also expensive, and their support is also poor."
"I would like to advance reporting and analytics for the platform to see how much data is coming into the platform. how much data is expiring everyday, and what tape savings we are getting through reclamation."
"The solution should improve the ability to monitor backup failure."
"Scalability is poor. As you get to bigger environments, this is where our gaps have been introduced. As we have grown over the past couple of years, the gaps have become more apparent."
More IBM Spectrum Protect cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"For my company, the tool is affordable and reasonable...I don't think most people know that when a company has large systems in place, the TCO is a lot lower."
"IBM Spectrum Protect has a fixed price and includes no additional costs."
"We are paying for support and maintenance on a monthly basis."
"Going to IBM Tech University Conference saved me from making a major purchase of the wrong thing, which was very helpful."
"The pricing is a little expensive for our current employer, so they want to move to a cheaper solution."
"That's no longer my department, but I have some past experience with licensing. It is not cheap. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of licensing. In terms of additional costs, there is management overhead. It is a complex solution and a lot of work goes into managing clients. It has gotten better over the years, but compared to its competitor, it is still heavy on management overhead."
"It can be perceived as expensive since it is designed for enterprise use."
"Use capacity licensing. It's easier and cheaper."
More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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?
It's expensive. I acknowledge the cost associated with it.
See all answers
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?
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 dash...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

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Bareos vs Bacula Enterprise
Compared 52% of the time
UrBackup vs Bacula Enterprise Logo
UrBackup vs Bacula Enterprise
Compared 19% of the time
Veeam Data Platform vs Bacula Enterprise Logo
Veeam Data Platform vs Bacula Enterprise
Compared 13% of the time
Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Bacula Enterprise Logo
Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Bacula Enterprise
Compared 3% of the time
More Bacula Enterprise Competitors
Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Protect Logo
Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Protect
Compared 18% of the time
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Spectrum Protect Logo
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Spectrum Protect
Compared 18% of the time
Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect Logo
Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect
Compared 11% of the time
Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Spectrum Protect Logo
Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Spectrum Protect
Compared 11% of the time
Rubrik vs IBM Spectrum Protect Logo
Rubrik vs IBM Spectrum Protect
Compared 6% of the time
More IBM Spectrum Protect Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Backup and Recovery
March 2025
Bacula Enterprise reportDownload Bacula Enterprise product report
Buyer's Guide
IBM Spectrum Protect
April 2025
IBM Spectrum Protect reportDownload IBM Spectrum Protect product report
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
 

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.

Bacula Systems
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.
IBM
 

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
April 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: April 2025.
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