Cohesity DataProtect vs IBM Storage Protect comparison

Cohesity and IBM are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. Cohesity is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3, while IBM is ranked #13 with an average rating of 7.3. Cohesity holds a 2.7% mindshare in BRS, compared to IBM’s 2.1% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Cohesity users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Cohesity DataProtect

Read 74 Cohesity DataProtect reviews

6,852 Views
5,619 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

IBM Storage Protect

Read 3 IBM Storage Protect reviews

4,461 Views
3,747 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Cohesity DataProtect

IBM Storage Protect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2025

Cohesity DataProtect and IBM Storage Protect are competing solutions in the data protection category. IBM Storage Protect has the upper hand due to its advanced features and security measures, justifying a higher cost in complex environments.

Features: Cohesity DataProtect offers simplified data management, scalability, and competitive pricing. IBM Storage Protect focuses on robust security, extensive enterprise system integrations, and advanced adaptability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cohesity provides a straightforward deployment model and responsive customer service, suited for hassle-free setups. IBM Storage Protect, with a more complex deployment, offers structured support tailored to sophisticated environments.

Pricing and ROI: Cohesity DataProtect's appealing cost structure facilitates quick ROI, ideal for budget-conscious businesses. IBM Storage Protect's higher initial cost is justified by specialized features, offering long-term operational efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed Cohesity DataProtect vs. IBM Storage Protect Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cohesity DataProtect vs. IBM Storage Protect

September 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

Cohesity DataProtect

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

6th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Backup (9th)

IBM Storage Protect

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

13th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Cohesity DataProtect is 2.7%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Storage Protect is 2.1%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cohesity DataProtect	2.7%
IBM Storage Protect	2.1%
Other	95.2%

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

Giovanni Golinelli.

Hybrid IT Architect at Quanture Spa

Easy to use, offers good scalability and responsive support

The deployment depends on the environment. Deploying on VMs is relatively simple. But for most of our customers, we implement physical clusters with at least three configured hosts using the existing model. So, it depends on the setup. Implementing DataProtect itself wasn't particularly challenging. One key requirement for successful DataProtect deployment is proper network configuration. If the network setup isn't right, you won't achieve optimal performance. We have developed a service for some of our customers where they implement an appliance or physical cluster of Cohesity at the customer site. Then, we use cloud clustering to replicate, and even in production, a second copy of the protected data. And in some cases, we have developed some disaster recovery procedures using Cohesity.

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

"With instant DR failover using SiteContinuity, we are able to keep our files available no matter the situation."

"After linking a cloud subscription, like Azure for example (AWS and Google are also supported), you can "spin" a VM onto the cloud from any backup snapshot."

"We can run test scripts on production data."

"Instead of four different solutions for protecting VMs, physical servers, SQL, and NAS, we now have one solution with Cohesity that is lightning fast and has amazing features."

"Cohesity has very simple reports to help you stay in the know of which servers are being backed up or not."

"Several features enable us to perform fast recovery, such as instant fast recovery. All our virtual machines protected with the product can be quickly restored to another healthy environment with minimal downtime for our main customers. These features have significantly improved our recovery time objectives."

"It has a lightning fast restore."

"A robust, verifiable backup with a restore solution, which decreases our backup and has a restore window."

More Cohesity DataProtect pros

"The most valuable features of the product are data deduplication and disaster recovery."

"The scalability of IBM Spectrum Protect is good."

"Incremental backup is highly valuable as it allows for significant time and cost savings."

"Instead of taking three different backups of your systems, you're taking only one. You're able to crack that open and get what you need. The incident recovery, where it creates the VM and then you're running it, technically you're running it on Spectrum Protect. But then in the background, it's doing the storage motion and moving it off the Spectrum Protect back to your VMware environment. The users don't know the difference."

"We are able to run it in an enterprise quite easily with one or two resources."

"The way it covers backup and archive needs. The flexibility of backup copy group always allows me to cover the customer's requests."

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

"Since the technology is reliable, it simplifies the backup process significantly. Now, our focus can primarily be on managing full backups and creating some offline copies."

More IBM Storage Protect pros

Cons

"Initial setup can be complex if you need to change IP addresses. Hopefully, they improve that in a future release."

"Cohesity DataProtect takes hours to restore a single file, even a small one."

"Reducing storage capacity requirements and improving security features are also areas that could be enhanced."

"It would be great to add SQL Object Level restore, so user objects, tables, etc. can be restored without having to restore the entire DB."

"I would like to see Microsoft Exchange DAG supported as soon as possible."

"We would like it to have more capabilities for different kinds of PaaS or SaaS services in the Azure cloud, such as Azure SQL or Azure Cosmos DB."

"For Oracle DBs, we have observed a few bugs. This can be done better."

"Cohesity cluster upgrades have not been as easy as a single button click. They are a manual process that requires upgrading each node into a cluster individually."

More Cohesity DataProtect cons

"Most customers still struggle with the reporting piece, especially generating reports. I think it needs some improvements in this area."

"I need two separate solutions for virtual and physical systems. I need IBM Spectrum Protect Plus for virtual systems and Spectrum Protect for physical systems and that's a pain. It would be an improvement if they were combined."

"We recently had a situation where we quickly got code, and the number of tapes exceeded the library capacity so we were waiting a while to change. We got a fix for this right away."

"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."

"It can be improved for large file systems with many files. Spectrum Protect can restore large files very well, but if you're restoring millions of little files, it is not as great. At one point, we tried to implement the VMware module with it, and it was awful and terrible. I don't know if that has improved. If it hasn't, this would be one big improvement."

"There is room for improvement in the service aspect."

"The software is complex; setup is complex."

"No one can fix every solution for backup and restore."

More IBM Storage Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing model is impressive and very effective."

"The ROI is huge. Not really measurable at this point, but the price of the unit was a fraction of what a couple hours of downtime could result in."

"It has reasonable pricing, and we know they can give discounts. If you look at the primary pricing or the list pricing, it conforms to the market pricing, but you have to have a discount on it. Otherwise, it is way too expensive."

"From my last assessment, the pricing for Cohesity DataProtect was reasonable. Compared to its closest competitor, Rubrik, I found Rubrik's pricing to be somewhat high-end. While Rubrik may have more advanced security features than Cohesity DataProtect currently, Cohesity DataProtect is releasing a new solution in the near future that will compete directly with Rubrik."

"The solution's pricing is in the mid-range, where it's neither costly nor cheap."

"There is monthly licensing."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."

"Pricing, setup costs, etc. are pretty typical. The initial cost for Cohesity was less than other products the we evaluated. Cohesity's pricing does offer benefits as DR target costs are less than other solutions. You are not charged for DataProtect licensing for target DR data consumption."

More Cohesity DataProtect pricing and cost advice

"We have capacity licensing. We use the front end. The capacity licensing is pretty okay on the licensing price. I used to use the old PVU-based licensing in the early environment, but now we use capacity-based licensing."

"The pricing is a little expensive for our current employer, so they want to move to a cheaper solution."

"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."

"Regarding retro-compatibility of the product between versions, your data is always available and the ROI is unquestionable."

"When compared to the cost of other enterprise products, it seems to be in the same range. However, compared to the cost of non-enterprise products, it is really high."

"The pricing of the solution is high in comparison to other products on the market. For example, IBM and Symantec have less costly options."

"It is really expensive. Its price is not good for Latin America. Its price is good for the United States or Europe."

"Customers need to pay for licensing in order to use IBM Spectrum Protect. The customers that have been using it for a long time are okay and happy with it. From a cost point of view, it's better for them to renew their licenses than to go through the difficult process of changing a backup product in their environment, and migrate from one product to another."

More IBM Storage Protect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	22
Large Enterprise	42

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	53
Midsize Enterprise	25
Large Enterprise	94

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cohesity DataProtect?

Several features enable us to perform fast recovery, such as instant fast recovery. All our virtual machines protected with the product can be quickly restored to another healthy environment with m...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cohesity DataProtect?

I find Cohesity DataProtect to be expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cohesity DataProtect?

What areas have room for improvement? Is there anything that could be simplified to make it better?

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Storage Protect?

The best point about IBM Storage Protect is that it can use IBM tape environments, which we still use and will continue to use in the future.

See all answers

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

IBM Storage Protect is generally an expensive tool. However, with good contracts with IBM or its partners, the cost might not be so high. New customers can expect very high prices.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Storage Protect?

One point for improvement for IBM Spectrum Protect is security, as IBM has not been investing as much as in the past. There is a need for additional layers of security to fill the gaps, which is wh...

See all answers

Comparisons

Rubrik vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 23% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 15% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 11% of the time

Veritas NetBackup vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 6% of the time

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 3% of the time

More Cohesity DataProtect Competitors

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Storage Protect

Compared 14% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Storage Protect

Compared 12% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Storage Protect

Compared 11% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs IBM Storage Protect

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Storage Protect Plus vs IBM Storage Protect

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM Storage Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cohesity DataProtect

October 2025

Download Cohesity DataProtect product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Storage Protect

October 2025

Download IBM Storage Protect product report

Also Known As

Cohesity

IBM Spectrum Discover

Overview

What is Cohesity DataProtect?

Cohesity DataProtect is a top-level, sophisticated, software-defined backup and recovery solution created for cloud environments. Cohesity DataProtect is made to hyperscale and is one the most thorough policy-based protection solutions available on the market today.

Cohesity DataProtect melds multiple-point products into a single software that is able to be deployed as on-premise or consumed as a service.

Top Features:

Hyperscale made easy: Cohesity DataProtect improves data protection by doing away with the need for backup silos and administers backup and recovery with a single user-friendly, easy-to-understand interface. Cohesity DataProtect provides extensive 24/7 enterprise-class protection for a large, varying set of sources, including virtual and physical servers, NAS and SaaS workloads, relational and distributed databases, and traditional and containerized applications.

Super fast recovery: Cohesity DataProtect offers near-zero recovery point objectives (RPOs) and near-instant recovery time objectives (RTOs) to satisfy your business service-level agreements (SLAs). Using Cohesity Helios’ unified data plane and control plane you can immediately search and recover data on any Cohesity cluster, located anywhere. DataProtect distinctively minimizes downtime by immediately mass restoring any amount of virtual machines (VMs) to any point in time, and lowers data protection costs by as much as 70% or more.

Backup as a Service: Feel free to take advantage of the elasticity of the public cloud and the cost-effective value of Cohesity DataProtect when delivered as a service. When you choose an OPEX option, you can eliminate the need for on-premises hardware. There is a SaaS option that will allow you to very simply configure your backup workloads and immediately begin protecting your vital all-important data and applications.

It’s as easy as: sign-up, connect, and protect!

Ransomware protection: Cohesity DataProtect offers stellar recovery at scale. The solution is so intuitive, it has machine learning-based anomaly detection to stop incidents before they happen. Cohesity DataProtection can provide immutable backups, Datalock write once, read many (WORM), encryption, and role-based access control (RBAC).

Cohesity DataProtect integrates well with many of today’s top solutions, including, but not limited to:

Hypervisors: VMware vSphere (5.5 and later), Microsoft Hyper-V (2019, 2016, 2012 R2), Nutanix AHV and RHeV

Kubernetes-based data and application state

Cloud: AWS EC2, Amazon RDS, Azure VM, and Google Compute

Physical: Windows, Linux(RHEL, CentOS, OEL, Debian, Ubuntu), AIX (7.x), and Solaris

Databases: Oracle (11g R2, 12c), Oracle RAC and SQL (2008 or later)

Distributed Databases (NoSQL and Hadoop): MongoDB, CouchbaseDB, Apache, Cassandra, Cloudera, and Hortonworks.

Bare Machine Recovery: Windows and Linux

Applications: MS Exchange (2010 SP3 or later), MSFT Active Directory, Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Teams, Groups), SalesForce (SFDC), and SAP HANA

Primary storage: Pure FlashArray, HPE Nimble, and Cisco Hyperflex

NAS: Pure FlashBlade, NetApp, Isilon, IBM GPFS, Google EFS, Elastifile, and generic solutions*

Reviews from Real Users

One reviewer, who is head of IT infrastructure at Kampmann says, “Cohesity really is a Next-Gen Data Management Software,” and goes on to indicate that Cohesity “works flawlessly with easy replication of backups and numerous supported backup sources.”

Another user, who is a senior network engineer at a legal firm, relates that "Cohesity is a robust and feature-rich solution"

Cohesity

IBM Storage Protect offers data protection and management to secure critical business information efficiently. It's designed to be a scalable and flexible solution for data backup, recovery, and archive needs in complex IT environments.

IBM Storage Protect delivers comprehensive data protection by integrating backup, recovery, and archiving functionalities. It supports a range of workloads and infrastructures, from on-premises to cloud environments, facilitating efficient data management. Its platform provides seamless scalability to meet evolving business needs, underpinned by reliable security measures. Organizations leverage its capabilities to ensure business continuity and minimize data loss risks, making it vital in a data-driven world.

What are the key features of IBM Storage Protect?

Advanced Data Protection: Offers robust encryption and data integrity for secure backup processes.
Scalability: Grows with your data demands, supporting large data volumes without compromising performance.
Cloud Integration: Seamlessly integrates with cloud platforms, enhancing backup strategies with hybrid options.
Automated Operations: Simplifies management tasks with automation, reducing manual intervention and errors.

What benefits should users expect when evaluating IBM Storage Protect?

Cost Efficiency: Reduces storage costs by optimizing backup processes and data retention strategies.
Data Safety: Ensures data accessibility and integrity during recovery efforts, building trust in data protection strategies.
Operational Efficiency: Boosts productivity through streamlined and automated backup management workflows.
Compliance Readiness: Helps maintain compliance with data protection regulations by providing thorough reporting and audit trails.

Industries like finance and healthcare implement IBM Storage Protect to safeguard sensitive information against threats. In financial services, it's crucial for maintaining client data confidentiality, while healthcare institutions use it to protect patient records, ensuring both accessibility and compliance with regulations.

IBM

Sample Customers

Tribune Media

CEMEX

Buyer's Guide

Cohesity DataProtect vs. IBM Storage Protect

September 2025

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