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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
16th
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 March 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 4.2%, 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 backup of Sybase databases is the most valuable feature in the existing environment. They have got the most documentation out there on the internet for its software protection. The documentation is excellent, and there are a lot of blogs, websites. Because it's still one of the oldest products out there for data protection, there are also lots of people who have a lot of experience in using this solution."
"The most valuable feature for data recovery in IBM Spectrum Protect is its database protection capabilities."
"IBM support is friendly, knowledgeable, and they always respond quickly. They've always been able to find the cause of my problem."
"The product helps us do data protection and restoration for disaster recovery (DR)."
"It helps our customers protect their data, keep it long-term, and feel pretty secure about it, basically sleeping well at night."
"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."
"by backing up only the changed data, we average around 75TB per night. If we had to do full backups, even occasionally, we would not be able to complete the backup within 12 hours, or we would have to make a large investment to fit a full backup within the 12 hour window."
"I like the cross-platform features."
"We have a file server and our data file server, everything. We use it for VM server backup, too."
"The most valuable features are the ability to create a trust relationship and historical reports."
"I think the support is fine. We haven't had issues with it."
"The deduplication feature is useful. Deduplication and compression features are what I like about NetBackup."
"Good graphical user interface. It's easy to create policies and to do installs."
"The solution offers very good storage efficiency, so there's excellent compression and deduplication within the product that our clients really appreciate."
"It covers all kinds of different architectures. Plus, it's very user-friendly and it is very reliable"
 

Cons

"I am not really impressed with the Level 1 support, but once I get past that and go to Level 2, then we will usually get some type of resolution."
"If you take Spectrum Protect into account, and you have it along with restrictions to Spectrum Archive by means of LTFS, this is also something which should be made better within the overall product's program."
"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."
"My customers are not always happy with the Level 1 support. Sometimes, it just takes too long for the response to come, which is probably something that needs to be addressed."
"I would like to see the operations center be a lot more functional. It was nowhere near as functional as the admin center, and I'm doing a lot of command line with it."
"There is room for improvement in IBM Spectrum Protect, especially regarding its support for virtual environment backups."
"I would like to advance reporting and analytics for the platform to see how much data is coming into the platform. how much data is expiring everyday, and what tape savings we are getting through reclamation."
"It would be helpful if the solution included some sort of ransomware protection."
"Improvements can be made to the service by providing better and more competitive ratios on data backups. The functionality for backups is there with Veritas, but I would like to see them optimize and enhance this feature more."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"Endpoint backup capability is needed."
"The reporting of the backups could be better."
"The product is not able to keep up with other competitors in the market."
"It is not very user-friendly."
"The interface should be improved."
"The speed of restoring data could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not cheap."
"Regarding retro-compatibility of the product between versions, your data is always available and the ROI is unquestionable."
"The price of IBM Spectrum Protect is expensive. However, there are a few packages and it is unclear because, for the entry suite they have both options, which are the back-end storage capacity and the front-end storage capacity."
"We have capacity licensing. We use the front end. The capacity licensing is pretty okay on the licensing price. I used to use the old PVU-based licensing in the early environment, but now we use capacity-based licensing."
"We are paying for support and maintenance on a monthly basis."
"IBM Spectrum Protect has a fixed price and includes no additional costs."
"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."
"If you want to have more scalability you have to purchase more licenses. The license is annually and there are a lot of different licensing depending on the number of terabytes needed. It is not based on per-user, core, or servers. You can backup anything you want using the purchased terabyte space."
"It is very expensive. The licensing cost for this solution is on a yearly basis. It is approximately 50k. We will continue using it at least for the next year, but we are currently doing an analysis to switch to some other solution."
"Our primary complaint about this product is that it is too expensive."
"The licensing model is cost-prohibitive as you scale out."
"Licensing was very expensive and did not scale well if needed to move between license models."
"My licensing model is based on capacity so as we grow, the price we pay increases and it becomes too expensive."
"The price of NetBackup is okay. I think it's a little bit expensive but manageable. It has a lot of features, and the backup is better than most applications, so I think the price is competitive."
"Veritas NetBackup's price could be a problem for small businesses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
 

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: February 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.