IBM Spectrum Protect vs NetApp SnapCenter comparison

IBM and NetApp are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. IBM is ranked #16 with an average rating of 7.1, while NetApp is ranked #50 with an average rating of 7.5. IBM holds a 2.2% mindshare in BRS, compared to NetApp’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

IBM Spectrum Protect

Read 149 IBM Spectrum Protect reviews

3,808 Views
2,925 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

NetApp SnapCenter

Read 27 NetApp SnapCenter reviews

1,183 Views
767 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Protect

NetApp SnapCenter

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect and NetApp SnapCenter are two prominent data protection and management solutions. IBM Spectrum Protect shines in pricing and support, while NetApp SnapCenter is noted for its feature set, which users feel justifies its higher cost.

Features: IBM Spectrum Protect offers comprehensive backup and recovery capabilities, effective scalability, and flexible deployment options. NetApp SnapCenter integrates with various environments, provides high speed, and has intuitive management features.

Room for Improvement: Users of IBM Spectrum Protect point out the need for more straightforward configuration, better documentation, and enhanced user interface. NetApp SnapCenter users seek enhancements in stability, broader platform support, and optimization of resource utilization.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Protect is praised for its flexible deployment options and responsive customer service. NetApp SnapCenter is also recognized for its deployment process and effective customer support, though some users report additional time spent during setup.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect offers competitive setup costs and a strong ROI, benefiting from lower ongoing expenses. NetApp SnapCenter is seen as pricier upfront, but users find the investment worthwhile due to advanced features and integration capabilities that enhance long-term ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NetApp SnapCenter Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NetApp SnapCenter

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

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

NetApp SnapCenter

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

50th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp SnapCenter is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

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

Mir Gulzar Ahmed

IT Manager at Synergy Computers

Integrates well with various applications , provides a cloning feature for creating snapshots or clones of volume and a centralized command

It is basically centralized command control software. When the users visualize the workflow of the backup, the management and the customer storage administrator know the ins and outs of the backup and recovery. They can make the strategy for their backup and recovery and the certainty of their backups and restore. Strategic planning: Also, it is easy to make a strategy when you have visualized the inflow and outflow of the backup and recovery. With the CLI or native way, without any UI or management tool, you might not be able to create any strategy at all. This is especially important when you have multiple storage systems inside your data center or organization. You need a tool that connects and visualizes the workflow of the backup and recovery from all the storage systems and NetApp storage systems installed within the organization. It is very important when you have multiple storage systems, and you need to manage your backup and recovery workflow. Ease of Management: Unlike other storage vendors, NetApp has its own product called SnapCenter. Other vendors need to acquire third-party software or integrate with other software to manage storage systems. NetApp has its own solution, which is SnapCenter. NetApp's SnapCenter gels well with their storage systems and products. Ease of management is already there. It's a fine software with easy installation, management, and understanding. It's not a complicated software to understand.

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 MN backup for a cluster is most valuable because it has made backing up the GSF as a zero-file system easier. I like its stability a lot. Over the years, I very rarely had a problem with it."

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

"Forever incremental - allows TSM to optimize storage needs."

"IBM Spectrum Protect offers stable software and products."

"by backing up only the changed data, we average around 75TB per night. If we had to do full backups, even occasionally, we would not be able to complete the backup within 12 hours, or we would have to make a large investment to fit a full backup within the 12 hour window."

"We have been using it for several years, and it is quite reliable and predictable. We are quite comfortable with this solution. They're coming up with new features as well. It has good scalability, and it provides good integrations with business-critical applications or databases, such as SAP HANA. It works as expected, and we don't see any issues."

"Once setup, you do not need to touch it again. You just need to do a formal check on possibly batch updates."

"SPIR is Instant Recovery for Spectrum Protect. It sends snapshots using space efficiently and blocking backups to the Spectrum Protect server. It provisions the snapshot from the backup server to the same or new server near instantly."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pros

"The support from NetApp is very good, and I would rate it as ten points."

"The product’s most valuable feature is cloning."

"It's all together managing both storage and backup, which makes it easier for troubleshooting issues and the automation part of it"

"It has greatly improved our DR activity."

"I like the instant backups and recovery feature that SnapCenter provides within NetApp storage systems."

"We have been very satisfied with the technical support's help. Their knowledge level is great. For a noncritical question, they will get back to us within a day."

"What is very handy for our clients is the consolidated view. They have a dashboard with everything, through a single pane of glass. This is what they really need because, within seconds, they can have a good overview and see if there are any errors or any issues."

"The backup process finishes very quickly."

More NetApp SnapCenter pros

Cons

"I want to see better compression than what it currently does."

"We need better protection from ransomware or the ability to identify ways we can protect ourselves from ransomware. Having backups is one thing, but specifically, we need methods to recover if we have a ransomware attack."

"The stability could be improved."

"In a future release, it would be a benefit to have the ability to add an application as a storage target, as a storage pool. Additionally, they should add more functionality to the administration for the Operation Center."

"Probably educating the virtual group who are not as used to the product. Most of our expertise is with AIX servers and virtual server backups."

"The Hyper-V and SQL Server backup could be improved. In the 2016 version there was a significant improvement, but I think IBM has a big challenge with these technologies."

"The previous GUI that they had was slow, and it did not have enough information on it."

"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."

More IBM Spectrum Protect cons

"I would like to see replication support between systems. Right now, it's kind of limited. We manage them separately from the storage system interface, not from SnapCenter. It would be nice if it was integrated into SnapCenter."

"The interface usability needs improvement. It should be more user-friendly and easier for customers to use."

"I'm waiting for SnapCenter for hybrid solutions. Right now, we only have SnapManager for hybrid. I need agents for that. People are looking to install SnapCenter in a SQL environment, but where they're running SQL on Hyper-V and using virtual files. Currently, we don't have support for hybrid."

"SnapCenter could improve its integration with other backup solutions, such as Veeam."

"We tend to have a lot of Hyper-V... so now we have two management consoles and we would ideally like to leverage SnapCenter to include Hyper-V."

"Groups might be helpful for each site or data center so that we know a given data center has these resources while another data center has those resources. It's not always easy to group hosts by type."

"The product lags in terms of availability."

"Plugins should be developed in shorter times. Performance generally could be a little bit faster."

More NetApp SnapCenter cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is fair. Price-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."

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

"The different license models can give good benefits to the end customer."

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

"We are paying for support and maintenance on a monthly basis."

"The licensing fees are between $8,000 and $10,000 per year."

"The price of IBM Spectrum Protect is expensive. However, there are a few packages and it is unclear because, for the entry suite they have both options, which are the back-end storage capacity and the front-end storage capacity."

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

More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice

"We see a financial value with SnapCenter because we don't have to license Commvault, which is pretty expensive."

"The product is inexpensive."

"It comes free with the amount of equipment we purchase from NetApp. In terms of pricing, zero is my favorite number."

"The licensing is well-designed because it's already included in some packages with NetApp storage. Therefore, for most customers, it's okay as the SnapCenter license is already included in some NetApp bundles."

"Pricing is very good because if you already have NepApp controllers, then it's included."

"The license for SnapCenter was included with the storage array."

"We have a site license, so it comes with the product."

"It's free. The license is included with other NetApp products."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

20%

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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

What do you like most about NetApp SnapCenter?

Most banks and financial institutions use the solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp SnapCenter?

The product should be free because it is just software to administrate systems purchased from NetApp, which are already expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp SnapCenter?

The interface usability needs improvement. It should be more user-friendly and easier for customers to use.

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 18% of the time

Veeam Data Platform 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

Rubrik vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Protect Competitors

Synology DSM vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 26% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 18% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 16% of the time

Veritas NetBackup vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 9% of the time

Cohesity DataProtect vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 8% of the time

More NetApp SnapCenter Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect

May 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Protect product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp SnapCenter

May 2025

Download NetApp SnapCenter product report

Also Known As

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

SnapCenter

Overview

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

Unified, scalable platform for application-consistent data protection and clone management. This software simplifies backup, restore, and clone lifecycle management with application-integrated workflows.

NetApp

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

All for One Steeb AG, Accenture

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NetApp SnapCenter

April 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NetApp SnapCenter

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NetApp SnapCenter and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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