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Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

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

Commvault Cloud
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
eDiscovery (3rd), Cloud Backup (2nd), Disaster Recovery as a Service (2nd), File Archiving (1st), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (4th), SaaS Backup (2nd), Threat Deception Platforms (1st), Container Backup Software (1st)
IBM Spectrum Protect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
14th
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 July 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Commvault Cloud is 7.3%, up from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Reller - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides extremely fast backup, is easy to manage, and is flexible
Commvault Cloud's automated policies provide the notification we need to ensure our data is secure and managed correctly. Commvault Cloud provides excellent visibility across all of our organization's data. It is extremely important to our organization that Commvault has a unified platform that offers recovery across cloud, on-prem, and SaaS workloads. It has helped our organization improve by simplifying the way we manage our environment. We could not manage the same environment with only half of our current staff. We have yet to find anything in our environment that Commvault does not support. Commvault Cloud's Risk Analysis helps us identify, categorize, and classify sensitive data enabling us to take the appropriate actions to protect it. Commvault does a good job helping us limit our exposure and ensure compliance. Commvault has helped us reduce our data management costs significantly. Compared to Dell Avamar, the costs are vastly different. Commvault is much more cost-effective. We are licensed by capacity, so we don't have to worry about licensing different features. We have all the features that are licensed by capacity. And as far as ongoing support costs and other expenses, they are much lower than what they were with Dell Avamar. Commvault also gives us the flexibility to use any storage we want, while Avamar is tied to the Data Domain, which is not cheap to support. It has helped us reduce our backup time unless we are using Data Domain. This is because we can perform deduplication and compression on the client layer, which reduces the load on the network. We cannot do this with Data Domain. In fact, if we even attempt to perform a quick progress check before sending data to the Data Domain, the system fails completely. We learned this the hard way. We are using many more advanced features in Commvault Cloud than we ever did in Dell Avamar, simply because we had to license each feature separately in Avamar. As a result, we did not perform many backups in Avamar, such as all database backups (DB2, SAP HANA, Oracle, and SQL). These backups were performed outside of Avamar. We are now using Direct Connect agents for all of our databases. This allows us to perform incremental backups, which we could not do with the previous method. As a result, we have reduced our backup times by two-thirds, or even more in some cases. Compared to when we were backing up directly to Data Domain, Commvault is now running our backups ten times faster. This has resulted in a significant reduction in our backup times. Commvault has helped us reduce the RPO. Even in Data Domain, it has reduced our storage times by about half. It has also helped us reduce the threat detection time. We reduced the RTO significantly with Commvault. Commvault has helped us reduce downtime primarily due to the increase in the performance of resources.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Commvault provides the status of a backup or restore operation."
"It is a stable solution."
"It's very easy to set up the storage across all platforms. This allows us to be dynamic and change on-the-fly."
"One valuable feature is unlimited backup. You can back up existing users and folders."
"One of the most valuable features is the encryption which helps save you from ransomware. Because the data is already encrypted, it cannot be encrypted again."
"Commvault Cloud provides an excellent solution."
"Commvault provides data protection. Their engine is ransomware-agnostic so ransomware doesn't compromise our backup data. Therefore, we can rely on their data protection to recover and back up our production system."
"Commvault is an all-in-one product that is very simple and operational for business use."
"It is scalable beyond anything my customers ever aspire to."
"One of the main things that I like about IBM is the versioning of the data - meaning that we can have multiple versions of a file or directory of a server."
"IBM Spectrum Protect offers stable software and products."
"It is pretty easy to use and maintain."
"Every time customers make a change or we have made a change, then they use the product to do a cloning and refreshing. They are happy that they get good performance something changes."
"The most valuable feature is the backup speed."
"The scheduled backups ensure we meet the requirements for our business, and we keep backups of certain environments."
"The components of IBM Spectrum Protect explain how the data is protected. The administration is very easy, and the vertical migration is intuitive."
 

Cons

"The initial setup was complicated."
"With so many features, sometimes you cannot find what you are looking for in the interface and you have to dig into books online to find out how to solve an issue."
"The interface could be improved because it has two different consoles."
"Bare-metal restore needs some work. It's not intuitive and seems to have been an afterthought."
"Commvault has two management dashboards. The first is the CommCell Console, which is Java-based, and the second is Command Center. We don't always find all the features we need in the Command Center and we need to go through the Java console, and sometimes features are only on the Java console."
"Commvault could benefit from increased automation to streamline processes and enhance predictability."
"Suppose I am restoring a particular file. If I want to restore the permissions only from that particular folder, that is not possible. I have to restore all the data for that particular folder. If there was an option to just restore the permissions, that would be better."
"This product is overly complex to operate and run."
"It would be helpful if the solution included some sort of ransomware protection."
"The administration interface should implement more functionalities that exist only in the command line and needs improvement in how some reports are created."
"The most important feature which I wish to be added involves the GUI, the user interface."
"This solution does not have good support for virtualization and a hyper-converged environment."
"I would like a little more ease with the virtual platforms, because it is a huge thing that is coming up."
"It is not compatible with other operating systems like Windows or Linux, and lacks a consolidated dashboard from Browser Spectrum."
"We did not see any drawbacks to IBM Spectrum Protect before assisting a customer using Windows that wanted to migrate to using UNIX. IBM Spectrum Protect does not offer an option to migrate from other operating systems."
"The GUI has long been a problem for TSM/Spectrum Protect."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Commvault Backup & Recovery is perhaps the best value for our money that I have seen in a backup product."
"The license for Commvault HyperScale X is paid annually."
"The licensing costs are determined on a yearly basis. It might be around $40,000 or $50,000. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Compared with other backup technologies, Commvault is a bit more costly, but we are satisfied with the support, the services, and the features that we get with Commvault."
"Everyone else offers the subscription-based model nowadays, while Commvault Complete Data Protection still has the traditional license model, where you must buy a set of licenses. You pay for one hundred licenses even if you only use fifty virtual machines, so the licensing model needs improvement."
"It is a little too high. I would like to get more of a consumption model or more of a periodic true-up type of model that is more friendly to the ups and downs that you may have in your data instead of locking into multi-year agreements."
"Licensing fees are billed on a yearly basis."
"The solution is expensive. The subscription is based on a monthly basis. There are additional costs that vary depending on the size of the backup."
"Spectrum Protect is not a cheap option."
"Some of the new advanced features are definitely more into cost savings, e.g., dedupe compression, so doing more with less."
"We pay for a terabyte license to support our backend usage."
"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."
"IBM Spectrum Protect can be considered an averagely-priced product."
"The licensing is varied. If we have small environments (not many TB being managed) it is best to license by PVUs (depending on the number of cores of the machine). If we manage many TBs we look at licensing by capacity which allows us to use all the agents of the product."
"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."
"The pricing is a little expensive for our current employer, so they want to move to a cheaper solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Commvault?
The tool is affordable. I rate the pricing a six out of ten. Implementation requires additional costs because we need Commvault Professional Services.
What needs improvement with Commvault?
Data center backup must be improved. We also want the product to provide us with a cloud-based backup. If we use Microsoft Exchange Online for email services, we want to know how to get a backup in...
What do you like most about Commvault Complete Data Protection?
IntelliSnap and file system backups are valuable features.
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum 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...
 

Also Known As

Commvault Complete Data Protection, Commvault Backup & Recovery, Commvault HyperScale X, Metallic, ThreatWise
IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aberdeenshire Council, Acxiom, BAM Group Ireland, Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta, CI Investments, Clifford Chance, American Municipal Power, American Pacific Mortgage, AstraZeneca, Dongbu Steel, Denver Health, Dow Jones, Emirates Steel, Penn State Health, Prime Healthcare, Sonic Healthcare, Sony Network Communications, TiVO, UCONN Health, The Weitz Company
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Commvault Cloud vs. IBM Spectrum Protect and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.