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Bacula Enterprise vs IBM Storage Protect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 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

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 (16th)
IBM Storage Protect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Storage Protect is 2.3%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

GiovanniRamirez - PeerSpot reviewer
Solid backup tool with good scalability
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 it in their environment It was a very good project. The Bacula concept, topology, and networking…
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"High availability (HA): It is one of the best features."
"The amount of data that it protects with very little storage by doing incremental forever is one of its most valuable features."
"One way they have improved our organization is through the stability of the solution and the availability of the product."
"Scalability is pretty much unlimited."
"It seems very scalable and robust. It can do what we require it to do."
"The software-defined ability to do data reduction through deduplication and compression, as well as being able to replicate data to a cloud container."
"They have recently added support tickets specifically engineered around performance. This has been very useful for us when we run into issues where customers are looking to try to squeeze a lot more horsepower out of older system."
"With the new features that we have added, it has made a difference as far as faster recovery and speed."
 

Cons

"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"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."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"Its management part can be better and simplified. It is kind of a beast as compared to Commvault or Veeam, but they are more user-friendly. They are also easier to learn, whereas Spectrum Protect definitely takes time. They should simplify it. Our teams are pretty comfortable with it because we have been using it for a long time, but from the perspective of a new user who is evaluating or using this solution, it is definitely more complex in terms of manageability. Its monitoring could be improved so that it can even monitor the jobs that are scheduled by external schedulers. There are situations where a database team might decide to use their own schedulers, but currently, Spectrum Protect is not able to catch those jobs in the Operation Manager console."
"Scalability is poor. As you get to bigger environments, this is where our gaps have been introduced. As we have grown over the past couple of years, the gaps have become more apparent."
"There is room for improvement in the service aspect."
"Sometimes we experience trouble with the backup transfer of the control files."
"They need to do a better job on Windows, because if you are running Windows, the scalability is more limited than AIX and Linux."
"It needs better connectivity with other non-IBM application hardware and non-IBM platforms."
"There needs to be a bit more automation."
"High availability (HA) is a scalability challenge."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"The platform is neither highly priced nor inexpensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The pricing is a little expensive for our current employer, so they want to move to a cheaper solution."
"Spectrum Protect is not a cheap option."
"You need to put it in a PoC and test it out if you can."
"Going to IBM Tech University Conference saved me from making a major purchase of the wrong thing, which was very helpful."
"We have spec'd out our build, and the cost of it can work quite easily today for our future needs."
"IBM Spectrum Protect can be considered an averagely-priced product."
"Its licensing is complex, and its price is not really reasonable. It is on the expensive side. IBM, in general, is slightly expensive, but with IBM Spectrum for the virtual environment, they are looking into the aspect of helping customers with the cost and providing a cost-effective solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
University
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
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.
What needs improvement with Bacula Enterprise?
Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability.
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...
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?
IBM Storage Protect is generally an expensive tool. However, with good contracts with IBM or its partners, the cost might not be so high. New customers can expect very high prices.
What needs improvement with IBM Storage Protect?
One point for improvement for IBM Spectrum Protect is security, as IBM has not been investing as much as in the past. There is a need for additional layers of security to fill the gaps, which is wh...
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM Spectrum Discover
 

Overview

 

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.
CEMEX
Find out what your peers are saying about Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Storage Protect and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.