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Bacula Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

Bacula Systems and IBM are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. Bacula Systems is ranked #24 with an average rating of 10.0, while IBM is ranked #16 with an average rating of 7.1. Bacula Systems holds a 1.0% mindshare in BRS, compared to IBM’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Bacula Systems users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of IBM users who would recommend it.
Bacula Enterprise
Read 10 Bacula Enterprise reviews
  • 1,062 Views
  • 907 Comparison Views
90% willing to recommend
IBM Spectrum Protect
Read 149 IBM Spectrum Protect reviews
  • 3,808 Views
  • 2,925 Comparison Views
86% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect and Bacula Enterprise compete in the data protection category. Based on user reviews, IBM Spectrum Protect is favored for deployment and customer service, while Bacula Enterprise is preferred for pricing and feature robustness.

Features: Users praise IBM Spectrum Protect for its comprehensive data backup and recovery features, scalability, and reliability. Bacula Enterprise stands out for its flexible and customizable backup solutions, extensive platform support, and advanced scheduling capabilities.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Protect users mention improvements needed in documentation quality, system setup complexity, and a steep initial learning curve. Bacula Enterprise users point to the need for enhanced technical support, better integration capabilities, and more effective user support structures.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Protect users commend the straightforward deployment process and professional customer service. Bacula Enterprise users report a more technical deployment requiring specialized knowledge but value its extensive documentation. Customer service received mixed reviews for Bacula Enterprise.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect users find it pricier with a slower ROI due to higher initial setup costs. Bacula Enterprise offers cost-effectiveness and faster ROI, seen as a budget-friendly option with competitive features. Despite higher costs, IBM's feature set and support merit consideration for more extensive enterprise needs.

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To learn more, read our detailed Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Report (Updated: April 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Spectrum Protect
April 2025
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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

Bacula Enterprise
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
24th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (17th)
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
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Davilson Aguiar - PeerSpot reviewer
Very cost-effective and well organized with good compression
It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company. A managerial user who wants more information beyond the operational technician should be able to access it. It could include greater transparency regarding the volume of data trafficked on the network, as well as the expectation of deduplication. A more practical strategy could come with a backup policy model as a suggestion for both large and small companies. A simple suggestion is to visually implement the backup time as far as your physical media.
Read full review
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.
Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"We can freeze and start databases for consistent backups."
"With data deduplication and compression, we are reducing our overall storage footprint for our disk histories. Therefore, we are reducing the actual cost of the disk for our data protection and data backups."
"The technical support for Spectrum Protect is very mature. It is very committed to giving a top-notch support experience."
"Data archiving is easier and less time-consuming."
"We can use it with any storage for the back-end to save data."
"It allows us to have one interface."
"Replication processes with container storage pools allow reduction of storage space and network bandwidth, using deduplication and compression."
"Data reduction definitely reduces costs, not only software costs, but from the infrastructure needed."
More IBM Spectrum Protect pros
 

Cons

"Bacula needs a graphical user interface because, for administrators, the command-line interface is okay, but for the average user it is not very easy."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"If IBM could provide a partial module, that would be great."
"They can include more cloud-enriching features. I would like IBM Spectrum Protect to have the functionality for backing up a VM directly in Azure. I would like to be able to back up a VM directly in Azure without spinning up a Hyper-V cluster and backing up the virtual server."
"Customers have migrated off of it because of its lack of virtual environment functions."
"The product’s recovery process in terms of agent installation needs improvement"
"I think Spectrum Protect's interface is not so user-friendly, but the interface is not so friendly. Some of the functions are too complicated. I prefer a simpler solution."
"Any feature that is compliant with virtualizing the application should be improved."
"There have been scalability issues. The core product does not support scale out. We needed to create a new system and manage resources separate from the existing one."
"The installation process could be simplified."
More IBM Spectrum Protect cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"We pay for a terabyte license to support our backend usage."
"The licensing fees are on a yearly basis, which for us it is about R400,000 (approximately $27,000 USD)."
"The price of IBM Spectrum Protect is expensive and there is only a standard licensing fee."
"We chose IBM Spectrum Protect, because they actually have something called MSP pricing, which means managed services provider pricing. The pricing was attractive, and it seems to be a platform that IBM is totally investing on in terms of new functions and new capabilities."
"You need to put it in a PoC and test it out if you can."
"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."
"License-wise regarding IBM, it's licensed per terabyte. And that is after compression and deduplication."
"The pricing of the solution is high in comparison to other products on the market. For example, IBM and Symantec have less costly options."
More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bacula Enterprise?
Bacula is more expensive than various other solutions. It’s almost completely commercial now. Products like Veeam software are much more expensive.
See all answers
What needs improvement with Bacula Enterprise?
Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability.
See all answers
What is your primary use case for Bacula Enterprise?
The last scenario in which I used Bacula was for a customer who needed some open-source tool which could support encryption at that time. We managed to convince the customer to use Bacula to deploy...
See all answers
What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Protect?
IBM Spectrum Protect is stable.
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Protect?
It's expensive. I acknowledge the cost associated with it.
See all answers
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...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

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UrBackup vs Bacula Enterprise Logo
UrBackup vs Bacula Enterprise
Compared 17% of the time
Veeam Data Platform vs Bacula Enterprise Logo
Veeam Data Platform vs Bacula Enterprise
Compared 13% of the time
Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Bacula Enterprise Logo
Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Bacula Enterprise
Compared 4% of the time
Rubrik vs Bacula Enterprise Logo
Rubrik vs Bacula Enterprise
Compared 2% of the time
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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Spectrum Protect Logo
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Spectrum Protect
Compared 18% of the time
Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Protect Logo
Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Protect
Compared 18% of the time
Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Spectrum Protect Logo
Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Spectrum Protect
Compared 11% of the time
Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect Logo
Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect
Compared 11% of the time
More IBM Spectrum Protect Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Backup and Recovery
May 2025
Bacula Enterprise reportDownload Bacula Enterprise product report
Buyer's Guide
IBM Spectrum Protect
May 2025
IBM Spectrum Protect reportDownload IBM Spectrum Protect product report
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
 

Overview

Bacula Enterprise is a highly scalable, especially robust and secure data backup and recovery software. Its unique low cost subscription model empowers data centers to truly escape data volume price traps. With a high degree of flexibility and customizability, Bacula offers native integration with a wide range of hypervisors, databases, file systems, cloud interfaces and containers. High numbers of enterprise organizations worldwide (incl. NASA, Bank of Austria, Swisscom or Sky PLC) have adopted Bacula Enterprise backup software in mission critical environments because of its advanced features and ability to handle high data volume at very low cost.

Bacula Systems
IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) is a data protection platform that gives enterprises a single point of control and administration for backup and recovery. It is the flagship product in the IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) family. It enables reliable, cost effective backups and fast recovery for virtual, physical and cloud environments of all sizes.
IBM
 

Sample Customers

NASA, SwissCom, Navisite, Turner Studios, Bank Austria, Caixa Bank, SdV Plurimedia, Leibniz University Hannover, Zeta Global, Tricore, NetLog, Siemens, LocaWeb, wbsGo, itesys, Queens School of Computing, Escrypt.
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
Buyer's Guide
Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Spectrum Protect
April 2025
Free Report: Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Spectrum Protect
Find out what your peers are saying about Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Spectrum Protect and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
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