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IBM Spectrum Protect vs NAKIVO Backup & Replication 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
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
149
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NAKIVO Backup & Replication
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
6th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NAKIVO Backup & Replication is 1.6%, down from 2.0% 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.
Mattia Sangiorgio - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhances data protection strategies and ensures the reliability of backups with helpful support
The features we have found most valuable in NAKIVO Backup & Replication include its cost-effectiveness, seamless integrations, comprehensive functionalities, and ease of installation and management. The pricing model is very competitive, providing excellent value for the robust features offered. Its seamless integration with our VMware infrastructure ensures smooth operation without any compatibility issues. The wide range of functionalities, including incremental and full backups, storage optimization, and disaster recovery options, meets all our backup needs comprehensively. Moreover, the simplicity of installation and the intuitive user interface have made it easy for our team to quickly set up and manage the backups without requiring extensive training.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a very stable product. The cost is similar to that of other enterprise solutions."
"The business value comes from the capability to overcome data losses."
"Good deduplication and compression features."
"One of the features which is most interesting in Spectrum Protect is the ability to scale out to great environments. This is something that not many vendors have on the market."
"With the new features that we have added, it has made a difference as far as faster recovery and speed."
"Support of the IBM X platform and the backup data replication to DR are the most valuable features."
"It is a really scalable solution. We can scale it up. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
"Forever incremental - allows TSM to optimize storage needs."
"The backup and replication are great."
"The easy management and a good overview are the most important aspects."
"Technical support responds very quickly."
"The user interface is good, and it's user-friendly. I also like its usability with hyper-convergence products like Nutanix and others in the data infrastructure."
"The cost aspect and the ease of licensing, along with simplified licensing, are most valuable."
"This product provides cost-efficient and reliable backups."
"It can be quickly configured via web pages."
"The product is easy to manage for any IT person who is new to backup, recovery, and replication."
 

Cons

"The previous GUI that they had was slow, and it did not have enough information on it."
"Restoring massive files is a very time-consuming process."
"The administration tools for GI need improvement, as the current assessment suggests shortcomings in the back-end system."
"The software is very complicated. You have to do a lot of configurations to build a server, and you would need to backup and restore."
"Technical support could be improved."
"It's difficult in terms of the configuration at set up. In our case, it required another admin, one person dedicated to the backup."
"It has a lot of areas for improvement. Its reporting for job completion or incompletion can be improved. It should also provide a granular recovery, ease of operation, data life cycle management, and media management. It should support a backup in such a format that in case of a disaster, one can start the virtual machine out of the backup itself. Its reliability can also be better. It is also expensive, and their support is also poor."
"IBM Spectrum Protect could be improved by making the installation easier. Once it's implemented, it's okay. IBM started lagging behind when things started moving to storage and cloud-based solutions. Even though they've recently released updates that give cloud-based protection, personally, I still believe they are not up to par with the likes of Rubrik. The entire product is a little bit clumsy because they have co-joined two different products, so it's complex. Even from a sales/explaining to people what it does point of view, it's complex. Whereas, if you take more current products, it's a single box solution. You reel it in, you fire it up, you do a couple of points and clicks, and off you go, whereas the IBM system is seriously complex. There's a lot of training involved and it's a massively difficult product to sell at this point in time."
"I had to manually install SNMP, which wasn't hard, but a step I had to take, to plug this into the monitoring system."
"Using an independent bootable media to restore full physical machines would enable physical machines that may be serving as Nakivo Director or Transport machines to be reliably restored to service without undue delay, ensuring that an enterprise's local environment remains intact."
"They had given a feature of real-time replication which they stopped in NAKIVO."
"An additional feature that would be appreciated is disaster recovery automation."
"The reporting features could be enhanced to provide more detailed and customizable reports for better insights into backup operations."
"I would like to see support for backing up from other platforms, such as physical machines."
"One of the things I liked least about this software is when an update was pushed to one of the servers we had, somehow we didn't receive the update and needed some quick troubleshooting."
"More statistic options would be a great feature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are paying for support and maintenance on a monthly basis."
"It is expensive."
"We have spec'd out our build, and the cost of it can work quite easily today for our future needs."
"Going to IBM Tech University Conference saved me from making a major purchase of the wrong thing, which was very helpful."
"Customers need to pay for licensing in order to use IBM Spectrum Protect. The customers that have been using it for a long time are okay and happy with it. From a cost point of view, it's better for them to renew their licenses than to go through the difficult process of changing a backup product in their environment, and migrate from one product to another."
"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."
"The solution has a capacity based licensing, front and back-end license."
"IBM provides an open license policy, which is more like a gentlemen's agreement."
"You have a lot of different options when it comes to pricing and the pricing models are pretty flexible and affordable."
"From the perspective of Indian users, the cost is a little bit high."
"We use a perpetual license that is priced well."
"Pricing is easy to understand and very affordable."
"As a free solution for a small environment, this is a great solution!"
"It has a very good price in the market."
"Nakivo is cheaper per machine and per backup."
"I advise that this is the best product for medium or small environments according to my cost-benefit analysis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum 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...
How does Nakivo compare with Veeam Backup & Replication?
Nakivo is my favorite backup software. Below are the main benefits of Nakivo compared to Veeam 1. Low cost. 2. Backup storage with global deduplication (this is the main requirement of a backup sol...
What do you like most about Nakivo?
NAKIVO Backup & Replication is very easy to use.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nakivo?
The product is affordable even for smaller organizations.
 

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
Coca Cola, Honda, 3M, University of Arizona, University of Maryland, University of Arkansas, Johns Hopkins University, Marriott, Radisson Hotels and Resorts, Fujifilm, Eiffage
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NAKIVO Backup & Replication and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.