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IBM Spectrum Protect vs Veritas Backup Exec 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
Veritas Backup Exec
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Veritas Backup Exec is 1.8%, down from 2.7% 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.
Pawel Augustyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplified interface with good performance but needs monitoring
I need to use PowerStore and Veritas Backup Exec. It is a direct backup to types, and it is supported by my backup. It offers good performance and stability, and it works properly. I am happy with this program. It is still working on aligning with security requirements and data encryption for Amazon or ATAC. It has a lot of functions and security measures, which ensure our backups are secure.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has a lot more capabilities and functions than a lot of other products. Even though it is more complex, the reason is because it gives you a lot more features. This is what I prefer, especially for a long retention."
"The most valuable feature is the backup speed."
"The most valuable features are the stability and also how it's seamlessly integrated with other IBM offerings."
"The most valuable features of the product are data deduplication and disaster recovery."
"The software-defined ability to do data reduction through deduplication and compression, as well as being able to replicate data to a cloud container."
"The ability to migrate between media over a long period of time. My customers are long-time users, and they have benefited from being able to move between tiers. They have been able to do this within the product."
"Traditional archiving. One of our revenue streams involves maintaining archives of our customers' data for very long periods of time."
"It seems very scalable and robust. It can do what we require it to do."
"It is one of the most stable backup solutions."
"In the global business world, Veritas has a very good name. I think they have a good solid product, and they are always trying to improve it, and update it. ;They know what the client actually needs, and they are up to the challenge of satisfying those needs."
"The platform has significantly improved our backup and recovery processes by efficiently managing data protection and supporting tape drives. It has also provided reliable data recovery solutions."
"The most valuable feature of Veritas Backup Exec is the ease of use."
"We are happy with Veritas Backup Exec's stability."
"It is a good backup tool."
"We have never had any problem with storage and backups. It works very well and is a user-friendly solution."
"When something goes down, and we need to restore data, the most used case is being able to restore it. Veritas Backup Exec allows you to restore down to the file level."
 

Cons

"High availability (HA) is a scalability challenge."
"I would like to see integration with Copy Data Management, which is an IBM product. Right now, these two products are siloed, so if these two become integrated, the product would become a bit of a powerhouse."
"We need better protection from ransomware or the ability to identify ways we can protect ourselves from ransomware. Having backups is one thing, but specifically, we need methods to recover if we have a ransomware attack."
"Generally, the implementation of virtualization could be improved. The workflow service and so on are not working properly."
"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."
"Any feature that is compliant with virtualizing the application should be improved."
"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."
"Their support is lacking. I've talked to their developers and stuff in the last couple of weeks and they reassure me that some people have retired, and they're working on getting that bumped back up. But the support lacks a lot to be desired at this point."
"One area that needs improvement is SQL backup. Backup Exec doesn't support higher availability."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"In terms of improvements, I think the pricing model could be improved. They charge you by port, for every port that you have even if you're not using all of them."
"I wish that they have an outlet for the other products from Veritas built into the Backup Exec product. For example, Backup Exec does only server backup. Currently, it is possible to read the backup of one other product, but if they can add more products so that you can just go into the dashboard of these other products by clicking on a button within the Backup Exec product, it would be great."
"It could be improved in the area of reporting and ease-of-use."
"There still a lot of room for improvement in synthetic technologies, especially when targeted to deduplication media."
"They can improve the reporting component. The reports aren't user-friendly at all. You have to download them to Excel to get statistics."
"The cost is quite high. Along with the general costs, the supposed agents that you have to buy for the various options that you want to use ends up driving the costs higher as well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the pricing a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is not cost-effective, and ten is cost-effective."
"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."
"Licensing can be either complicated or simple depending on what type of licensing you wish to use and what works best for your environment."
"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.​"
"Use capacity licensing. It's easier and cheaper."
"It's very complicated. Licensing is a pain."
"The platform is neither highly priced nor inexpensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"It is affordable, but I hope that the price will come down a lot because of other competitors. It is a good price for the customer, but sometimes, the competition provides a much lower price. There are two ways to license it. You can license it per instance or per terabytes of data that we are mocking up. It is enough because it is not so complex. It is good when you're working with customers."
"The solution costs $700 per agent and is expensive compared to other products that offer better stability."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The product is affordable."
"Veritas comes with an annual licensing fee."
"The pricing is good."
"Veritas licensing is somewhat expensive. They have to decrease the price."
"I would like to see a better licensing model. They changed it and it's just horrendous."
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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
16%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
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...
How do the backup solutions of Veeam and Veritas compare?
Technically, Veeam is best for hyper-v & VMWare replications, snapshots, HA failover, also support for file system backups inside VMs., support for tape library & FC too. But Veritas Netbac...
What do you like most about Veritas Backup Exec?
The most important feature is the variety of backup applications it supports, including ERP systems and most other programs, such as Microsoft.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Veritas Backup Exec?
The price is one of the best. When I compare it with others, it is twice or three times cheaper, however, the functionality is the same.
 

Also Known As

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
Backup Exec, Symantec Backup Exec
 

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
Beta Offshore
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Veritas Backup Exec and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.