Dell NetWorker vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

Dell Technologies and IBM are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. Dell Technologies is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.0, while IBM is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.2. Dell Technologies holds a 3.1% mindshare in BRS, compared to IBM’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Dell NetWorker

Read 84 Dell NetWorker reviews

5,010 Views
4,203 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Protect

Read 149 IBM Spectrum Protect reviews

4,073 Views
3,133 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Dell NetWorker

IBM Spectrum Protect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect and Dell NetWorker compete in the data protection solutions category. Users generally rate IBM Spectrum Protect higher for pricing and support, but Dell NetWorker's features often make it a preferred investment.

Features: IBM Spectrum Protect is praised for its scalability, extensive platform support, and cost-effectiveness. Dell NetWorker is noted for its advanced integration capabilities, comprehensive reporting, and user-friendliness.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Protect users suggest enhancements in speed, modernizing backend processes, and better user interface customization. Dell NetWorker users seek improvements in backup and recovery speeds, better documentation, and improved security features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Protect is described as complex to deploy but has robust customer service. Dell NetWorker offers a simpler deployment process yet has mixed reviews regarding customer support.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect is considered cost-effective with a good ROI. Dell NetWorker's higher setup costs are balanced by its robust features and perceived long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell NetWorker vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell NetWorker vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

March 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

Dell NetWorker

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

12th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Dell NetWorker is 3.1%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

ErmiasGirma

System and Cloud Deployment Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc

Offers seamless integration and cost-saving benefits with enhanced recovery capabilities

Currently, in my organization, I am using Dell NetWorker for open-source solutions like PostgreSQL and MySQL databases, and some large VM environments. It also supports the Dell library and is used for the library archiving system Dell NetWorker allows for extensive customization, supporting…

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Syed Habib

Head of Infrastructure Security (S.A.V.P) at EXIM Bank Ltd

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

"The initial setup is very easy. It's incredibly fast."

"Very user-friendly with a good interface."

"NetWorker is easy to install on clients and servers, and making backups from server to storage and backup devices is straightforward."

"It is an extremely stable product."

"Technical support from Dell is excellent."

"The best feature is the DR replication for us."

"The solution is stable."

"The support for legacy products is very good."

More Dell NetWorker pros

"In the past, one of the most valuable features, and the biggest advantage, was the incremental forever feature. Not many other backup vendors provided that. In the pre-virtualization environment, it was very robust and simple technology, especially writing to tape."

"We have a very good team of administrators who know the product perfectly and are able to manage it on a day-to-day basis."

"With Spectrum Protect, you can use any type of disk to back-end the repositories. It gave us flexibility to use whatever storage we wanted at our secondary site."

"A robust tool which allows us to backup pretty much any environment, virtual or physical."

"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."

"It is very stable after deployment and will perform in a steady state."

"The amount of data that it protects with very little storage by doing incremental forever is one of its most valuable features."

"Space efficient data reduction, using progressive incremental forever in combination with deduplication and compression."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pros

Cons

"It's not easy to integrate. We have to read a lot of documentation in order to configure the solution."

"The software also isn't user-friendly like Convault or Rubrik. The solution errors and management aren't so good in comparison."

"When it comes to the stability of the product, some of the stores that have bad connectivity have some challenges backing them up because they operate remotely, the connection is slow, and it takes longer to manage the backup stuff."

"The management of Dell Networker is quite cumbersome."

"The user interface of this solution could be improved. It is not user friendly and is difficult to understand for new users. New users struggle to understand the logic."

"They need more support for image backups."

"We have faced problems with the initial configuration of the solution."

"The end-user experience is not good."

More Dell NetWorker cons

"I want a better user interface, support, and integrations."

"There could be various client systems and process integration included in the product."

"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."

"The product should be improved to save more space."

"The software is complex; setup is complex."

"I find the Level 1 and Level 2 support spend 80% of the time communicating the same information that I have already provided."

"Ease of use. That has got to be the one thing that I routinely hear from clients and customers, that it's a little bit more difficult than it should be. What I'm finding is that IBM has heard that and they're responding with updated interfaces and things like that."

"Better integration with other tools and databases is needed."

More IBM Spectrum Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's approximate, but I believe we pay around $20-30,000 a month in licensing."

"The licensing model can be traditional licensing or capacity-based licensing."

"The pricing is okay."

"It is inexpensive compared to new products."

"The price of the license could be cheaper and it would be a benefit if they came up with a new pricing model. The competitors here in Oman sell universal licensing where a number of virtual machines are hosted at the customer place which can be licensed, or you can license the CPU sockets in those servers. However, NetWorker offers only CPU sockets or overall storage capacity to backup, but there is no universal licensing where you can provide a number of VMs. They should offer more options to stay competitive with other solutions, such as Veeam."

"There is a licensing fee."

"It is a relatively inexpensive product compared to one of its competitors."

"Dell NetWorker is an expensive solution. None of the backup products are cheap. The licensing model offered is usually a five-year one."

More Dell NetWorker pricing and cost advice

"We have spec'd out our build, and the cost of it can work quite easily today for our future needs."

"That's no longer my department, but I have some past experience with licensing. It is not cheap. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of licensing. In terms of additional costs, there is management overhead. It is a complex solution and a lot of work goes into managing clients. It has gotten better over the years, but compared to its competitor, it is still heavy on management overhead."

"It's very complicated. Licensing is a pain."

"License-wise regarding IBM, it's licensed per terabyte. And that is after compression and deduplication."

"Technical support is pretty good. It is doing fine, but you pay for it."

"IBM Spectrum Protect has a fixed price and includes no additional costs."

"I don't have an idea about the pricing. They send that over to someone else, but I know that one of the issues they had was the licensing costs. I don't think they were happy with how they were charged."

"When compared to the cost of other enterprise products, it seems to be in the same range. However, compared to the cost of non-enterprise products, it is really high."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What's the difference between Dell EMC Avamar and Dell EMC NetWorker?

From the very beginning, Dell EMC NetWorker considers users and those who might potentially become users. In terms of both pricing and setup, this product offers an experience that is significantly...

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What do you like most about Dell NetWorker?

The feature that offers the greatest benefits in ensuring data integrity is its backup capability.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell NetWorker?

NetWorker has a high price compared to other solutions. Pricing is a major concern.

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?

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 31% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 14% of the time

Dell Avamar vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 12% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 8% of the time

Cohesity DataProtect vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 2% of the time

More Dell NetWorker Competitors

Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 19% of the time

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 18% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 11% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 11% of the time

Nutanix Mine Integrated Backup vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell NetWorker

March 2025

Download Dell NetWorker product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect

March 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Protect product report

Also Known As

NetWorker

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Overview

Built on a reputation of efficiency and reliability, thousands of customers trust Dell NetWorker to protect their data and applications across multiple environments, from core to edge to cloud.

Inherently flexible, NetWorker helps you deploy and leverage the data protection that fits your needs. NetWorker protects both physical and virtual environments, including VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V, as well as cloud workloads on AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

NetWorker is available as part of Dell Data Protection Suite, which offers comprehensive data protection software applications and tools. NetWorker is delivered as software and as a virtual edition.

Dell Technologies

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

Republic Bank, Westgate Resorts, Macquire Cloud Services, Shriners, Panatonni, Qatar Islamic Bank, Eurosport

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

Dell NetWorker vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

March 2025

Free Report: Dell NetWorker vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell NetWorker vs. IBM Spectrum Protect and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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