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Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect Plus 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

Commvault Cloud
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
eDiscovery (3rd), Cloud Backup (2nd), Disaster Recovery as a Service (3rd), File Archiving (1st), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (3rd), SaaS Backup (1st), Threat Deception Platforms (1st), Container Backup Software (1st)
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
23rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Commvault Cloud is 7.5%, up from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is 1.0%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Cassandra Cinar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides excellent visibility and helps reduce costs and time
We use intuitive administrative tools that readily reveal the volume of backed-up data. Our Commvault CommCell servers alert us to failed backups and provide detailed information. This transparency allows our managed service provider to easily grasp our pre-established thresholds and readily scale up with new technologies. We're highly satisfied with Commvault's automated data security and management policies. They meet our stringent requirements for secure and private data storage, including anti-ransomware protection and encryption. Notably, they also ensure compliance with GDPR for backups stored in Europe and other regions, fulfilling our regulatory obligations. Threat Scan's ability to scan backup data for threats is invaluable because it proactively identifies and neutralizes certain viruses and threats that may originate from our G Suite or be reported by our security incident response team, preventing potential outages. Commvault provides excellent visibility across our entire organization's data. They perform regular health checks, informing us of areas of strength and offering recommendations for improvement. These recommendations may include upgrading to newer product versions or addressing issues identified during the checks. It is important for our organization that Commvault provides a unified platform for recovery across cloud, on-premises, and software-as-a-service workloads. This is particularly important because many of our existing cloud environments rely on basic backups that are insufficient for our needs. Commvault empowers us to address this issue. We have implemented it not only in our own operating company but also across the corporate structure, rolling it out to virtually all AWS users. This is because the standard backup methods, such as snapshot backups, fail to meet our stringent requirements for recovery, service level agreements, and crucial functionalities like threat detection and other security features. Commvault ensures a robust and comprehensive backup infrastructure that satisfies all our essential needs. It has improved our organization by ensuring we meet our infrastructure requirements, adhere to our vulnerability methodology, and achieve service level agreements for both backup and storage requirements. The quarterly risk analysis allows us to effectively manage the lifecycle of both data and backups. It also sheds light on the types of data and backups we have, providing valuable insights. Commvault's risk analysis is one of the tools we use to meet our compliance requirements and implement the necessary controls for immediate security policy action. To ensure comprehensive data protection and comply with international regulations like GDPR, we rely on Commvault alongside our established financial systems and SOC-compliant practices. Commvault has helped us reduce our organization's data management costs by 75 percent, particularly for long-term backups. We ditched tapes and virtual tapes thanks to Commvault, replacing them with a fully disk-based backup system and cloud backups in AWS and Azure. By implementing Commvault, we've significantly reduced our backup times. This is achieved through a combination of incremental backups and data aging. Aged data is then moved to cheaper disk or cloud storage, ensuring cost-effective long-term retention while still meeting our recovery SLAs. While the overall time savings may be around 10-15 percent, the main benefit is not keeping everything on expensive primary storage and efficiently aging it out. Consequently, retrieving data from the Azure bucket typically takes five days or more, reflecting our agreed-upon SLA. It has reduced our recovery point objective, allowing us to store more backups. However, new regulatory and compliance requirements mandate that some backups cannot be deleted and must be retained indefinitely. To address this while still improving efficiency, we've implemented solutions for long-term data storage and improved data management practices. Commvault has helped our organization not only decrease our threat detection time but also improve threat prevention to such an extent that we often avoid facing the full impact of a threat altogether. By preventing these incidents, we're often unsure of the precise amount of time saved, but the benefit is clear: we don't need to activate disaster recovery mechanisms. It has not only helped us reduce our recovery time objective, but it has also ensured that our backups and long-term storage are secure, thanks to its comprehensive capabilities. In terms of total cost of ownership, Commvault has enabled us to significantly reduce both hardware and media costs for storage and backup. After factoring in encryption and compression, the total savings amount to close to 80 percent. It has been able to reduce downtime, but having a quick recovery plan and policy and SLAs that are published are met regularly.
Atif Najam - PeerSpot reviewer
Has very good integration features and can quickly backup data and optimize storage
I would like to see continuous data protection (CDP). If there is machine failure, you don't have to go to the backup copy that you took 12 hours ago. You can actually go back to the backup copy made half an hour ago. That is, it would be good to have certain-point-in-time recovery. I would like them to add global deduplication. With deduplicate backups, deduplication will work only with the data of a certain machine or a certain backup set. Usually, the data is repeated across the data of the backup sets. However, if IBM Spectrum Protect Plus provides a global deduplication option it will ultimately result in better storage savings.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Commvault has support for backing up operating systems and servers."
"Commvault can perform a backup no matter where you are, and it takes a backup every four hours. No matter when you come to the office, it'll take a backup if you're connected to the internet and check the system for online availability."
"With the use of the cloud, the solution is easy to learn."
"The solution has the fastest backup and better licensing."
"The user interface is very easy to navigate."
"The most important feature is that everything can be controlled using a single console."
"The solution’s user interface for managing the on-prem environment is good."
"It's very stable."
"Virtual snapshots that offer incremental backups."
"The solution is scalable."
"This is a multi-platform backup solution where you can take a backup from AIX, Windows, or Linux servers and restore from CD, disk, or tape."
"The most valuable features are the API features because it allows you to integrate with your Microsoft SQL, your Oracle, and your IBM Db2."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"Some of the features we find very valuable and use a lot, are retention sets."
"The tool has enough documentation; you don't need to contact the support team."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is the deduplication functionality. The clients moved to this solution originally because of this feature."
 

Cons

"The reporting is complicated and should be simplified in an upcoming release."
"Our customers complain that this is a difficult product to manage."
"They could work on the implementation of the features."
"We had some small issues with the reporting, but that was just a matter of fine-tuning the kinds of messages we receive by email. It was a little overwhelming in the initial configuration. So we reviewed our configuration with our partner and customized the reports so that we only get the important reports. I haven't seen any big issues or things that the solution is missing."
"I really struggled to configure HyperScale X as there was a lack of detailed documentation."
"Additional SaaS application support would be good... we have SaaS applications that may not be big enough for Commvault to support yet. Box.com is one we've asked about for years, and it's just not on the radar, as far as I know."
"Suppose I am restoring a particular file. If I want to restore the permissions only from that particular folder, that is not possible. I have to restore all the data for that particular folder. If there was an option to just restore the permissions, that would be better."
"Getting my guys the right access has a learning curve. Sometimes, it is, "Oh, okay. I think I got it for you." Then, they say, "Oh, nope. I logged in but I can't see this." Then, it is, "Okay, hold on. Give me a second. Let me change that. Okay, it's this one." That learning curve has probably taken a little bit longer than some simpler things. So, Metallic has some granularity, and as a systems administrator, I appreciate that. At the same time, I also realize that I have to learn it."
"There could be better integration with Spectrum Protect and Spectrum Protect Plus, it should be one solution."
"There's significant room for improvement. They are not yet where I want them to be."
"The tool needs to increase the number of threats."
"With ransomware protection and cyber protection, more improvement is possible."
"It requires much more automation features."
"The solution only supports HyperV and VMware but doesn't support Nutanix."
"The administration needs to be improved and made simpler to use."
"It still needs to grow and add new features. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, I believe, requires time to become competitive due to a weakness in the other software products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing could be better explained. Sometimes, it's unclear what features are available in different licensing models."
"Its cost is reasonable."
"I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten."
"I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten."
"The complete license gives us options for all the features. Commvault does not license based on storage or the management components. It can integrate with any storage vendor. That means that when we are out of storage and need more, we can integrate without additional licensing. In my opinion, Commvault needs to reduce the licensing cost by 20 to 40 percent to make it cost-efficient."
"In my experience, compared to solutions like Veritas and Veeam, while they do have their technical pluses and minuses, Commvault can save you on average forty percent initially, and then twenty to twenty-five percent annually."
"The tool is affordable."
"You have to pay for the licenses and the hardware you need for the Commvault environment. If you don't have all the hardware, you have to buy it, which can cost a few million. In the end, it's vital to protect our data, so the price isn't an issue."
"The licensing model of Spectrum Protect Plus is more efficient and cheaper compared to the original."
"I rate the price of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus a one on a scale of one to ten, where one is extremely expensive, and ten is very cheap."
"Unlike some other solutions, such as Veritas NetBackup where you have to pay for different licenses to use different features, there is a single license that allows you to use all of the features."
"If you need to extend it, it can be extended acting like a normal Spectrum Protect with a long archive."
"The initial cost of the product is perpetual but the support fees are billed annually."
"The price offering from IBM is coming down because it is based on number of VM machines. So, IBM is coming to the market to show the added value of the product."
"There is an annual license required to use IBM Spectrum Protect Plus. The cost of the license could improve, it is expensive."
"There are a few options available for purchasing the solutions. Overall, the price of the is high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Commvault?
The tool is affordable. I rate the pricing a six out of ten. Implementation requires additional costs because we need Commvault Professional Services.
What needs improvement with Commvault?
Data center backup must be improved. We also want the product to provide us with a cloud-based backup. If we use Microsoft Exchange Online for email services, we want to know how to get a backup in...
What do you like most about Commvault Complete Data Protection?
IntelliSnap and file system backups are valuable features.
What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?
The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that the product works and helps with restoration areas whenever there is a need to restore something.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?
It is probably based on the number of CPUs. They are fairly expensive.
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?
With ransomware protection and cyber protection, more improvement is possible. IBM provides these through a third party, so enhancement is needed. There's significant room for improvement. They are...
 

Also Known As

Commvault Complete Data Protection, Commvault Backup & Recovery, Commvault HyperScale X, Metallic, ThreatWise
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aberdeenshire Council, Acxiom, BAM Group Ireland, Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta, CI Investments, Clifford Chance, American Municipal Power, American Pacific Mortgage, AstraZeneca, Dongbu Steel, Denver Health, Dow Jones, Emirates Steel, Penn State Health, Prime Healthcare, Sonic Healthcare, Sony Network Communications, TiVO, UCONN Health, The Weitz Company
PT Wings Surya, Tectrade, State of Ohio
Find out what your peers are saying about Commvault Cloud vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.