It is a new product coming out from IBM to compete mainly against Veeam and Backup Exec software. It is mostly for the virtual environment, which is either VMware or Hyper-V.
Our starting customers have approximately 30 to 40 VM machines. This is our target per customer, which may grow in the future, but cost-wise, it should be less for them.
Mostly, in our region, they are implemented on-premise with a mix of disk or tape. Some of them are looking for cloud, and this product is fully integrated with all cloud vendors, like IBM Cloud or Amazon Cloud. Therefore, there is no problem if the customer would like to have type of of cloud backup to keep his data.
I would like more integration with security. We need to show the value of the product in regards to handling security. For example, how it handles current malware or viruses. IBM should be more proactive in this direction.
The solution's stability is high because it is derived from Spectrum Protect.
It is scalable. It starts from a small customer and grows with them as they develop and build up their business in the future.
Our company is managing small customer to large enterprise customers. This is because Spectrum Protect or Spectrum Protect Plus database can support very large enterprise customers with more than 4 billion objects. Thus, the solution is scalable and can be fitted for any customer.
We use them to support customer problems. The customer can open a ticket with a PMR with IBM for support. The customer can open it directly or we have our support line on GBM, so it will help the customer at a first stage or step before getting to IBM support. However, in a lot of cases, IBM is already supporting the customer, and the support is very good. The total fix time is recognized, and they can help our customers very well.
I sell the product, but we have client engagement with the customer during the project planning. This explains to the customer the scope of work and how much it will take. So, our implementation guy already creates this scope after discussing the customer requirements and understanding the customer infrastructure, or customer components, then they decide the scope of work. We have to execute the project plan to be ensure that the product is delivered and installed correctly.
If the customer is new, maybe the older version of Spectrum Protect was little bit complex because it did not have full gateway interface interaction. However, the newer version of Spectrum Protect is easier, and the customer is likely to see the gateway interface. It is much more user friendly.
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. The product can be extended again on for a short-term retention on disk if you are going only on a virtual environment, only on VM base licensing. However, if you need to extend it, it can be extended acting like a normal Spectrum Protect with a long archive.
Our customers do evaluate other vendors, especially Commvault. We also cannot ignore Veritas and EMC NetWorker Solutions. These solutions sometimes evaluate our base on pricing or function. It depends on the customer situation. It is different from customer to customer, as it is a bit difficult to change the backup software on the customer side. This is because it requires a lot of migration.
On stability, Mohamed wrote:
"The solution has a high stability because it comes from Spectrum Protect."
Last week, we met with a technical storage specialist at IBM. He explained that Spectrum Protect Plus is a brand new product designed from scratch by a team of programmers with no knowledge of Spectrum Protect.