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IBM Spectrum Protect vs MSP360 Backup 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

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
MSP360 Backup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
56th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (44th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (27th), MSP Backup (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MSP360 Backup is 0.4%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

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.
CONRAD FORREST - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution provides the ability to backup all types of cloud drives, is inexpensive, and has decent support
MSP360 Backup provides the backup functionality, but we need to provide the storage component. We can use Azure, AWS, or another provider, but we need to choose the storage provider and create a bucket to store our data. The vendor is making changes to improve the functionality of the service and the separation of storage, but I would like to see more integration and a knowledge base of the tool. Currently trying to understand why the storage is separated and how to implement the storage properly is a challenge. Using the solution incurs additional charges for the device storage and backup which are not included in the service. Unlike other solutions such as Kohl which includes everything at one price. MSP360 Backup can be improved by adding inclusive pricing.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With Spectrum Protect, you can use any type of disk to back-end the repositories. It gave us flexibility to use whatever storage we wanted at our secondary site."
"You can do restores very quickly. You can mount a drive and restore it right from the drive."
"Spectrum Protect's best feature is that I can use it practically anywhere, on any platform, and for any servers or clients."
"When I have to do disaster recoveries, I can do it with this tool."
"It helps our customers protect their data, keep it long-term, and feel pretty secure about it, basically sleeping well at night."
"Space efficient data reduction, using progressive incremental forever in combination with deduplication and compression."
"It is pretty scalable. It will scale to anything."
"The fact that we can take the backup straight onto tape is the most valuable feature."
"The initial setup is very easy. It's not overly complex."
"One massive advantage of this solution, as compared to more enterprise products, is that no firewall changes are needed on the client's premises. For the product to back up from the client's premise to the cloud, it just needs port 8 and port 443, which are anyway always open. This was one of the things that made us decide to go with the product. It is very difficult to justify a firewall change for a small client who doesn't even know what a firewall is and how to maintain a firewall, or doesn't have anybody maintaining their firewall. You then have to maintain the firewall. MSP360 Backup takes away firewall change requirements, VPNs, or channels that are needed for the backup."
"The most valuable feature of MSP360 Backup is its reliability."
"It has allowed me to implement a cost effective, highly configurable solution."
"General ease of use and performance of the Windows version is the most valuable feature."
"Technical support is very good."
"Block level transfers have significantly reduced the amount of time for transfers over some other solutions"
"The best feature is that it's very user-friendly to do scheduled backups and version maintenance."
 

Cons

"Any feature that is compliant with virtualizing the application should be improved."
"For the database side, it does not have object level recovery."
"We are having a balance issue between the reclamation and the backup function. It has to take the space back from the tapes before it can record to those tapes, but sometimes those two processes are overlapping."
"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."
"I would not recommend the tool to others because it is a really complex product."
"They need to do a better job on Windows, because if you are running Windows, the scalability is more limited than AIX and Linux."
"We cannot take VMware backups for our banking data center environment."
"High availability (HA) is a scalability challenge."
"The interface feels like it is targeted for end users who typically are looking for an all-in-one integrated push button solution. It would be better if the interface had a beginner mode and an expert mode."
"The main improvement is that it should have GDPR compliance. That's the problematic point. They say they are GDPR compliant, but they are not."
"There are some things that we don't like about it. That is why I was exploring alternatives in a hyper-scale environment. That is why I was checking IT Central Station."
"The Linux GUI leaves a lot to be desired. It lacks many of the features of the Windows version and is buggy, but it is still usable."
"The solution needs a better graphical user interface. It's a graphical user interface that is very old-school right now. They could give it a little more modern feel."
"The graphics are looking a bit old and should be updated."
"The solution's pricing is very high."
"The initial setup is a little complex as it has to be done in the office and requires someone to come in and install the solution on your server, then configure the scheduling, backup pushing, and so on."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not cheap."
"The product is not cheap."
"We chose IBM Spectrum Protect, because they actually have something called MSP pricing, which means managed services provider pricing. The pricing was attractive, and it seems to be a platform that IBM is totally investing on in terms of new functions and new capabilities."
"Its licensing is complicated. It goes by CPUs, and it is pretty expensive as well."
"The different license models can give good benefits to the end customer."
"I rate the pricing a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is not cost-effective, and ten is cost-effective."
"We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective."
"Some of the new advanced features are definitely more into cost savings, e.g., dedupe compression, so doing more with less."
"Pricing is reasonable although can be quite a large upfront cost."
"The solution is expensive."
"I rate the price of MSP360 Backup a seven out of ten."
"Its pricing needs improvement."
"MSP360 is vastly cheaper than its competitors and has almost all the same features."
"We have a very good return on investment."
"The cost is pretty inexpensive. Around four to five dollars per device, per workstation on each server."
"It includes a standard licensing fee. Once a year, there is a rebranding fee. The licensing costs are available on the internet for MSP360 Backup. There is a discount structure where if you have over 50 devices, you get a 50% discount. So, my cost is $2 a license per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about MSP360 Backup?
MSP360 Backup's most valuable feature is its backup interface.
What needs improvement with MSP360 Backup?
The product could be more user-friendly. Its pricing needs improvement as well.
 

Also Known As

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
Cloudberry Backup
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
StratX
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Protect vs. MSP360 Backup and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,476 professionals have used our research since 2012.