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IBM Spectrum Protect vs Veritas NetBackup 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
Veritas NetBackup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
116
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Veritas NetBackup is 3.4%, down from 5.2% 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.
Wesam Qashou - PeerSpot reviewer
A mature backup solution, with many features, and great support
Veritas NetBackup is the first line of defense when disaster strikes. Before performing disaster recovery, we must have a good backup of our image that is also protected from ransomware. This way, we have a golden image that is resilient to ransomware attacks. We saw the benefits of Veritas NetBackup within the first three months.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main thing is to keep the data safe and in files, keep it on tape ready for a request from a bank, and it is working perfectly with all our hardware."
"It is more efficient than most traditional backup solutions."
"The main feature of this product is a flexible architecture and functionality that allows you to solve problems of any complexity and scale. Most importantly, it is not just a product that simply makes a backup, but it restores and saves a large number of services in critical situations. By the way, it works fine with different types of clouds, supports S3."
"It covers all the different operating systems. If you need backup, it can pretty much do everything."
"The most valuable features are compression and de-duplication."
"It is a very stable product. The cost is similar to that of other enterprise solutions."
"We are talking about a stable solution which boasts good performance and security."
"I find the whole product useful. The backup archive client, snapshot, spectrum for virtual environments are beneficial features."
"The solution offers a lot of really great features that organizations can utilize and take advantage of."
"NetBackup is very easy for end-users."
"Its most valuable features are flexibility and reliability."
"This is the best solution that I know of."
"The feature that is most useful for us is that it backs up every application that we own."
"The Replication Director, Auto Image Replication, Accelerator, Oracle Intelligent Policy, synthetic and VADP backups are the most valuable features."
"NetBackup is highly stable. We have more than 1,800 policies that run every day."
"The solution is easy to scale."
 

Cons

"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."
"This product comes up against other products available that are marketed better but the other products that it's in competition with are a single product and this is one of IBM products. If it could be marketed as more for competitors I think that's where it comes short."
"It doesn't integrate with storage pools, with a normal pool. I'd like to see that."
"There have been some sizing issues now, and we are dealing with those."
"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."
"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."
"Software-wise, IBM Spectrum Protect didn't handle virtual machines that well. The license cost is mainly the area for improvement in IBM Spectrum Protect."
"This solution is not mature in terms of disaster recovery and could be improved."
"Veritas NetBackup has some limitations and it would be a benefit if we had better documentation."
"The solution costs too much."
"We want a solution that can be scaled-out because our data is growing very quickly, and we aren't able to back it up quickly. It takes one or two days, which is a problem. It is very slow. We just use one backup server. We want another solution with maybe a backup server cluster to back up more data in one day. We want a solution that can be scaled-out to back up our data quickly and efficiently."
"Veritas NetBackup has been in the backup and recovery market for quite a long time, but somehow, from my own observations and from feedback from end users, its user interface is lagging behind other comparable solutions such as Veeam."
"Improvements can be made to the service by providing better and more competitive ratios on data backups. The functionality for backups is there with Veritas, but I would like to see them optimize and enhance this feature more."
"The virtual environment, cloud integration, copy data management features need improvement."
"I have been involved in upgrades. They have not been straightforward. Some of them have required us to make changes to our architecture and production environment."
"It is not very user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is a little expensive for our current employer, so they want to move to a cheaper solution."
"The solution's pricing is fair. Price-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
"It's very complicated. Licensing is a pain."
"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."
"We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective.​"
"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."
"The licensing fees are on a yearly basis, which for us it is about R400,000 (approximately $27,000 USD)."
"It is very scalable, but the downside is that it costs money."
"We purchased a perpetual license and perform SMS renewals."
"Veritas NetBackup is more expensive than other backup solutions like Dell Power Protect and Veeam Backup."
"The price is okay."
"Pricing is pretty costly as compared to the other products but worth investing for the long term and high ROI."
"When you compare NetBackup's software licensing system with Veeam's, which is simpler and based on instances (or how many physical machines or virtual machines you want to protect), NetBackup isn't that competitive for smaller scale companies. However, if you're running many large workloads, then NetBackup may be the better option."
"We are very satisfied with the price of this solution."
"Veritas NetBackup is very expensive, and I think price is the main reason which some customers don't want to use this solution."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
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...
What is the best next generation backup tool?
Assuming you have an onprem ecosystem which runs the VMware, physical systems on Win, Linux and Unix and run both traditional DB's and nosql DB's like mongo, then Netbackup (NBU) will be the right ...
What do you like most about Veritas NetBackup?
The most valuable feature of cloud integration is the ability to send data outside of your location. This can be achieved by integrating cloud tier options or other object storage solutions.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Veritas NetBackup?
The product is cost-effective, and I would rate its pricing as an eight out of ten. The pricing model is based on the amount of data transferred, making it manageable for us.
 

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
Beta Offshore
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Veritas NetBackup and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.