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IBM Storage Protect vs Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 16, 2025

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 Storage Protect
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (12th)
Veeam Agent for Microsoft W...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2787573 - PeerSpot reviewer
Interim Head of Infrastructure at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Backup coverage has supported immutable protection and now needs a more modern, intuitive interface
IBM Storage Protect is from a previous generation of backup software. In those days, backup software was complex in setting up and complex to manage. The new software, such as Rubrik, is very easy to use and more relatable to younger engineers because its interface design is more similar to Office 365 and the newer controls and labels that we are accustomed to. The difficulty that we now have with IBM Storage Protect is that for this day and age, compared to other products that are out there, it seems complex. If we look back 15 years ago, all enterprise class backup software was complex, so IBM was not any different. However, many of these older systems, such as Commvault, still have the same complaint that they are very complex because they have tried to keep that same interface and the same way it works. This suits them, but it probably needed a complete overhaul to bring it into the ease of use that we have with modern software. However, that upgrade has not been done. IBM Storage Protect has not been upgraded into a modern platform. It still looks a legacy platform.
Salman Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at Habib Bank Ltd.
Functional application availability
There are not many options available for AIX backup. They provide the agent for AIX, but it could be more mature, and they should improve that option. They also provide the AIX agent, which is similar to the Windows and Linux agents. Since we use AIX machines, we need to take backups of those machines. However, the options available in that agent are limited. Therefore, the new version should have improvements in that area.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support is okay. We have not had many issues with them."
"The fact that we can take the backup straight onto tape is the most valuable feature."
"Incremental backup is highly valuable as it allows for significant time and cost savings."
"Forever incremental - allows TSM to optimize storage needs."
"Data reduction definitely reduces costs, not only software costs, but from the infrastructure needed."
"The way it covers backup and archive needs. The flexibility of backup copy group always allows me to cover the customer's requests."
"Once it is completed properly, it is low maintenance. Most of the functions do not require much deliberation. It is all the blueprints and technologies laid out, and it is straight forward."
"The most valuable features of the product are data deduplication and disaster recovery."
"User-friendly data backup and protection solution for a Windows environment. The Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows is very scalable, stable, and has good compatibility and integration."
"It's straightforward to set up."
"A full-featured option for managing virtual machines with an instant recovery feature."
"It is a stable solution."
"I like working on the Azure platform."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"This is a reliable system that supports Veeam backup and recovery for Windows."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to navigate inside a backup point to look for a specific folder or data you want to recover."
 

Cons

"It is not easy to manage like other products in the market. It is okay only if you are command-line driven. Even though the operation center is there, it doesn't provide a single view of everything. You have to, for example, use TSMManager on top of it, which gives you a far better management capability, but it is a third-party product. Its management needs to be improved. There should be an HTML or graphical interface. It is a very difficult product. For example, you have a backup policy where you want a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly policy standard. It is an old kind of system where you have to keep retention for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly backups, which is very difficult in IBM Spectrum Protect. In other products, in a matter of five minutes, you can configure such a policy. In TSM, it takes you one, two, or three days because you need to configure a node for each of them. If you have 250 nodes, you have to configure each node for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly retention. If you have 1,000 nodes, it is going to take you ages just to configure and register the nodes. You need to configure the schedule and the CAD daemons or services, depending on whether it is a Unix or Windows OS. Unfortunately, it is a very long and drawn-out process. You have to stop and start the services for changes to take effect. This is a very difficult part of TSM in IBM Spectrum Protect. To configure a backup policy, I should be able to select the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly options in one screen and finish it. After that, everything should happen in the background. All the backup products in the market already do that, and they are very simple to manage. This particular part of this solution has really been a major pain area for us, and unfortunately, we could not find a workaround. There is nobody at IBM who can give us a way to configure all this easily through a GUI or even scripts."
"It does not do too well in our virtual environment."
"RTO is a huge gap for us. If we had a disaster scenario and had to recover a bunch of stuff from tape, the RTO would be too long for us."
"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."
"In a future release, it would be a benefit to have the ability to add an application as a storage target, as a storage pool. Additionally, they should add more functionality to the administration for the Operation Center."
"This product comes up against other products available that are marketed better but the other products that it's in competition with are a single product and this is one of IBM products. If it could be marketed as more for competitors I think that's where it comes short."
"It lacks reporting and an efficient alert mechanism. The GUI could also be improved."
"Any feature that is compliant with virtualizing the application should be improved."
"A feature I would like to see is universal restore. At the moment, restoration can only be smooth on the same hardware. Let's say you have a server and you back it up with Veeam Agent, in case it fails or crashes. If you later buy a new server because the same one isn't available on the market anymore, there's a high chance that Windows will not boot up if you restore from the Veeam backup because the hardware is now different. Acronis has the universal restore feature, so it will work with generic drivers and you can restore Windows in any dissimilar hardware. As far as I know, Veeam doesn't have this feature yet."
"There should be an option to use the solution for physical machines."
"Troubleshooting is very hard."
"I would like there to be more integration with other platforms."
"The solution lacks instant recovery."
"The compression ratio and application ratio could still be improved in this solution. Reporting could also be improved, for better monitoring."
"There isn't really anything I would like to improve. Maybe the solution could be more secure."
"A lower price would always be beneficial."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It's very complicated. Licensing is a pain."
"It is fairly reasonable as compared to other solutions in the market."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is very scalable, but the downside is that it costs money."
"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."
"IBM provides an open license policy, which is more like a gentlemen's agreement."
"Use capacity licensing. It's easier and cheaper."
"Pricing is based on license packaging and duration. Longer term licenses are less per year and license packages also offer a discount."
"The pricing model is based on CPU and must be declared as Microsoft or VMware licensing."
"The cost for its licenses is reasonable and as per industry standards."
"We have a license package."
"It is less expensive than one of its variants."
"We are on an annual license to use Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows. There are not any additional fees to use the solution."
"The solution is inexpensive, more so than other products."
"We have a cloud provider agreement with Veeam. We are also paying for the agent."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Photography Company
22%
Performing Arts
19%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business53
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise95
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Storage Protect?
I do not know the current licensing cost for IBM Storage Protect and how we get our support because our licensing model is not quite standard. We do not buy IBM Storage Protect direct from IBM. We ...
What needs improvement with IBM Storage Protect?
IBM Storage Protect is from a previous generation of backup software. In those days, backup software was complex in setting up and complex to manage. The new software, such as Rubrik, is very easy ...
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Also Known As

IBM Spectrum Discover
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CEMEX
ContinuitySA, Landmark Information Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Commvault and others in Backup and Recovery. Updated: January 2026.
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