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IBM Spectrum Protect vs NetApp AltaVault 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
NetApp AltaVault
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
57th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (12th), Disk Based Backup Systems (6th), Cloud Backup (46th), Cloud Storage Gateways (6th)
 

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 NetApp AltaVault is 0.2%, up from 0.2% 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.
Naveen Radhwani - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable, fulfils compliance requirements, and enables to manage data backups easily
I use the solution for backup and recovery Our systems have become more stable and scalable after using NetApp AltaVault. The dashboard is useful for managing data backups. The deduplication technology helps me take offline backups efficiently. The workload on the end team has been reduced. It…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a really scalable solution. We can scale it up. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is that IBM Spectrum Protect is highly integrated with IBM ESS. In addition, it allows us to back up our virtual servers directly to take VM snapshots. It runs on Linux as well."
"Because of the flexible parameters, everything can be fine-tuned to the customers’ needs in their environment."
"The most valuable features are the stability and also how it's seamlessly integrated with other IBM offerings."
"It is good in terms of functionality. My clients are very satisfied with this solution."
"We can scale. Today, we have an average backup volume of 100TB a day."
"You can protect your data and keep it for long durations, without it spending too much time on the local disk."
"The platform has valuable stability."
"It's so easy to work with."
"The most valuable feature is the portability of large archived data. You're able to put things on large on-prem, low-cost storage and then augment that with even lower cost storage in the cloud."
"The flexibility. Being able to virtualize it, port it wherever I like, test my backups, test my DR capabilities whenever I like without impacting anybody."
"The dashboard is useful for managing data backups."
"Its initial setup is easy."
"The deduplication engine. Right now, we're at about 10.5 to 11 times deduplication of our backup data."
"The solution can be used for all Office 365 applications."
"Being able to move data seamlessly from one-premise to the cloud (Azure). It works great. The backup solution is perfect for us."
 

Cons

"The Hyper-V and SQL Server backup could be improved. In the 2016 version there was a significant improvement, but I think IBM has a big challenge with these technologies."
"An area for improvement would be the ease of use - the GUI is not up to the mark compared to other products in the market."
"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."
"This product should be more user-friendly for newcomers."
"It lacks reporting and an efficient alert mechanism. The GUI could also be improved."
"Software-wise, IBM Spectrum Protect didn't handle virtual machines that well. The license cost is mainly the area for improvement in IBM Spectrum Protect."
"We have had some problems about using storage agents on the X6 environment. It is not quite stable, but it is also not supported in a virtualized environment."
"It's difficult in terms of the configuration at set up. In our case, it required another admin, one person dedicated to the backup."
"I really want to partner it with the SnapCenter. We haven't implemented that yet. We're upgrading all of our stuff to the ONTAP 9, which you had to have."
"It's a good product, but it's becoming outdated and moving to their other primary architecture."
"What could be helpful is different user base authentication so then maybe we could allow different customers to point to a single appliance and they only see the backups and things that they have."
"I would like to see more web support."
"NetApp's own competing products complicate things."
"It would be nice if the solution was more complete. Many customers are looking for a single solution or silo that they can manage everything from. It would be nice, instead of having different products, if everything a client needed was in one solution."
"The solution needs faster indexing."
"There are some bits it could do better. With tighter integration maybe with Veeam, or something like that, it'd be really good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of the solution is high in comparison to other products on the market. For example, IBM and Symantec have less costly options."
"We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective.​"
"We have found that the pricing is high in our country."
"The pricing model of this solution is another difficult area, it's very sophisticated in the way they charge. It's based on PBU, which is a type of processor, how, many processors, and you need to put everything into an equation. However, they have different ways of charging or licensing. One way is a back-end volume or front-end volume, which is quite complicated."
"The price of IBM Spectrum Protect is expensive and there is only a standard licensing fee."
"Going to IBM Tech University Conference saved me from making a major purchase of the wrong thing, which was very helpful."
"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."
"The pricing is a little expensive for our current employer, so they want to move to a cheaper solution."
"You could compare it to a Dell EMC or ECS, and I think it's probably a little less costly than that. Within the marketplace, it's a medium cost."
"The price is a bit high."
"In one use case, and we have several, to run for a particular customer, the price is about $375,000 a year."
"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution, which comes to around 3,000 USD."
"The pricing is not too bad, but could be a little better."
"It is a rather expensive program."
"It's quite cost-effective."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Real Estate/Law Firm
9%
 

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...
Is NetApp AltaVault compatible with AWS?
Hello. Yes, it is compatible with AWS but the great thing about it is that it's actually working with so many cloud providers, it may be just for everyone. Besides the Amazon cloud services, NetApp...
Can AltaVault be used for data reduction?
Hello, you can definitely use NetApp AltaVault for reducing your data and giving yourself some more storage. This product offers you deduplication and compression, helping you achieve that. I'm su...
What kind of security does NetApp AltaVault give you?
My organization is very happy with the security that NetApp AltaVault gives us for our data on the cloud. First, it gives us the option for data recovery, which is very good, especially if someone...
 

Also Known As

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
AltaVault
 

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
Blach Construction, NASA, Riggs, Counselman, Michaels & Downes, Seminole County Public Schools and Spot Trading
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NetApp AltaVault and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,476 professionals have used our research since 2012.