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IBM Spectrum Protect vs Veritas NetBackup 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 NetBackup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
115
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 NetBackup is 3.8%, down from 5.4% 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.
Wesam Qashou - PeerSpot reviewer
A mature backup solution, with many features, and great support
Veritas NetBackup is the first line of defense when disaster strikes. Before performing disaster recovery, we must have a good backup of our image that is also protected from ransomware. This way, we have a golden image that is resilient to ransomware attacks. We saw the benefits of Veritas NetBackup within the first three months.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The interface is easy to use."
"We apply the new dedupe and compression technology, using maintenance and time to give more time for the backup window and less time for the overhead related to the daily housekeeping."
"The most valuable features of Spectrum Protect would be the compression and the deduplication."
"It is very stable. A plus is to use POWERAge for the SNR copy of the Spectrum Protect, then it is more reliable."
"It is a very mature product."
"Good deduplication and compression features."
"It provides our customers with the comfort of having reliable enterprise data protection."
"I find the whole product useful. The backup archive client, snapshot, spectrum for virtual environments are beneficial features."
"The simulation engine is highly valuable as it allows us to simulate what a failure would be like and generate reports."
"The main thing I like about NetBackup is CloudPoint. You can take a snapshot of the endpoint and back it up with CloudPoint. The data backups are the most important."
"The backup and restore features work very well."
"It is essential. We can't do without it."
"AIR and duplication, overall management and troubleshooting."
"Veritas NetBackup is a reliable, easy-to-use, and easy-to-deploy solution."
"We have an issue with the last version on the latest backup of the solution as it is not compatible with Sybase 16.5."
"What I like most is it is a professional product. It supports all kinds of technologies, and I consider it one of the best backup products available."
 

Cons

"We would like to see bare-metal restorers."
"IBM Spectrum Protect could be improved by making the installation easier. Once it's implemented, it's okay. IBM started lagging behind when things started moving to storage and cloud-based solutions. Even though they've recently released updates that give cloud-based protection, personally, I still believe they are not up to par with the likes of Rubrik. The entire product is a little bit clumsy because they have co-joined two different products, so it's complex. Even from a sales/explaining to people what it does point of view, it's complex. Whereas, if you take more current products, it's a single box solution. You reel it in, you fire it up, you do a couple of points and clicks, and off you go, whereas the IBM system is seriously complex. There's a lot of training involved and it's a massively difficult product to sell at this point in time."
"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."
"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."
"I would not recommend the tool to others because it is a really complex product."
"Perhaps some better documentation, which I believe was better in the past."
"No one can fix every solution for backup and restore."
"The solution could be more user-friendly and provide better monitoring. The monitoring should be improved first since it is a higher priority."
"Support for the solution needs improvement."
"Licensing costs are quite high."
"Updates were not always consistent."
"They need to work on the GUI. It has been the same for the last 10 years."
"Lacks a reporting feature."
"It would be helpful, in future releases, if the solution could add WORM (Write Once Read Many) support right within the product."
"When the customer is using SaaS applications like Office 365, the integration falls short and needs to be improved."
"It needs support for Kernel-based Virtual Machines (KVMs)."
 

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."
"The solution has a capacity based licensing, front and back-end license."
"The product is low cost. It is very cool when we design it to using licensing based on post capacity."
"Some of the new advanced features are definitely more into cost savings, e.g., dedupe compression, so doing more with less."
"We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective.​"
"License-wise regarding IBM, it's licensed per terabyte. And that is after compression and deduplication."
"Spectrum Protect is not a cheap option."
"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."
"Smaller virtualized environments will want to stick to a traditional licensing model if possible. It will likely be cheaper, but it is a pain to manage all the individual licenses for each client."
"Veritas NetBackup's price could be a problem for small businesses."
"Veritas NetBackup is quite expensive and licensing costs are fixed."
"The price of Veritas NetBackup is high, it should be reduced."
"The licensing model for this solution is very powerful."
"Pricing is pretty costly as compared to the other products but worth investing for the long term and high ROI."
"Veritas NetBackup is considerably cheaper than that of Druva, the former being quite affordable."
"When you compare NetBackup's software licensing system with Veeam's, which is simpler and based on instances (or how many physical machines or virtual machines you want to protect), NetBackup isn't that competitive for smaller scale companies. However, if you're running many large workloads, then NetBackup may be the better option."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
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...
What is the best next generation backup tool?
Assuming you have an onprem ecosystem which runs the VMware, physical systems on Win, Linux and Unix and run both traditional DB's and nosql DB's like mongo, then Netbackup (NBU) will be the right ...
What do you like most about Veritas NetBackup?
The most valuable feature of cloud integration is the ability to send data outside of your location. This can be achieved by integrating cloud tier options or other object storage solutions.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Veritas NetBackup?
The product is cost-effective, and I would rate its pricing as an eight out of ten. The pricing model is based on the amount of data transferred, making it manageable for us.
 

Also Known As

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
No data available
 

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 NetBackup and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.