Arcserve UDP vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

Arcserve and IBM are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. Arcserve is ranked #19 with an average rating of 7.0, while IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.4. Arcserve holds a 1.2% mindshare in BRS, compared to IBM’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 84% of Arcserve users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Arcserve UDP

Read 43 Arcserve UDP reviews

2,516 Views
1,455 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Protect

Read 150 IBM Spectrum Protect reviews

3,616 Views
2,660 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Arcserve UDP

IBM Spectrum Protect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect and Arcserve UDP cater to data protection and recovery, with distinct strengths highlighted by user reviews. Despite Arcserve UDP's strong features, IBM Spectrum Protect appears superior in several facets.

Features: Users value IBM Spectrum Protect for its scalability, reliability, and comprehensive data protection capabilities. Arcserve UDP is noted for its ease of use, flexible deployment options, and integration with cloud services.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Protect users mention steep learning curves, complex configurations, and a potentially daunting setup process as areas for improvement. Arcserve UDP users cite occasional stability issues, limitations in advanced features, and a need for better user interface enhancements.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Protect requires advanced technical knowledge for deployment, with mixed reviews on customer service responsiveness. Arcserve UDP is generally easier to deploy with more positive feedback on customer service.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect users report high initial setup costs but acknowledge long-term ROI due to comprehensive coverage. Arcserve UDP is commended for cost-effectiveness and faster ROI realization. Pricing perceptions lean favorably towards Arcserve UDP for immediate affordability.

To learn more, read our detailed Arcserve UDP vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Arcserve UDP vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

June 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

Arcserve UDP

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

19th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (11th)

IBM Spectrum Protect

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

14th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

150

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Arcserve UDP is 1.2%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

TeresitaSabile

Head of Operation and IT at Elgrade Inc

Cost savings and efficient decompression but needs better cloud integration

Our primary use case for Arcserve UDP is its decompression feature, which helped us save money by reducing storage needs. Despite moving to cloud applications, we have been using Arcserve UDP for backup and disaster recovery Arcserve UDP has helped our organization save considerable amounts of…

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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 solution has no limitations because it does backup for Linux and Windows."

"The product provides instant and virtual standbys."

"One of the things that I do like about it is that it has a very good deduplication feature."

"It is a very stable solution...It is a scalable solution."

"The standard backup and restore feature is most used."

"It's simple to set up."

"It allows us to back up all the servers and centrally manage them."

"The most valuable feature of Arcserve UDP is its decompression capability."

More Arcserve UDP pros

"The customization and the ability to backup across all platforms are the most valuable features."

"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 is very stable. A plus is to use POWERAge for the SNR copy of the Spectrum Protect, then it is more reliable."

"We cannot live without it, since it gives us the confidence to move forward."

"It saves you a lot of storage."

"The most valuable features of Spectrum Protect would be the compression and the deduplication."

"It is more efficient than most traditional backup solutions."

"The product is always stable and reliable."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pros

Cons

"The product is not user-friendly."

"One area for improvement in Arcserve UDP is its capability to interact with other cloud servers."

"We are looking at scaling up to the cloud and using immutable copies on the cloud. Arcserve UDP 8.0 does have the immutable feature supporting AWS, but I'm looking for multi-cloud support. So, I'm waiting for Arcserve to release that in the next release."

"It should be easier to switch between backup locations. We have multiple data storage locations and sometimes one of those storages need to be replaced. It would be nice if they made it easier to reconfigure the backup configuration."

"The time to backup servers that sit in DMZ must be improved."

"The tool doesn't provide cloud integration in India."

"Backups are very slow and time consuming."

"The initial setup was complex."

More Arcserve UDP cons

"We would like to see capabilities of long-term archiving and more support for hardware platforms."

"We have had some problems about using storage agents on the X6 environment. It is not quite stable, but it is also not supported in a virtualized environment."

"The usability of IBM Spectrum Protect could be improved, specifically additional features to the product in the operations center. Additional reporting facilities and stronger reporting tools such as build dashboards would be beneficial."

"It does what we need it to do, but it could be better with VM backups. It could be better integrated with virtual machines or VM backups, but that's why they have their Plus out now. Plus version is more geared toward VM backups. The regular version is more for endpoint clients."

"Generally, the implementation of virtualization could be improved. The workflow service and so on are not working properly."

"The features should be a little bit closer together."

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

"Its price can be better. It is very expensive. Its interface is very old and not user friendly. They can improve its interface. Their support can also be better. My clients are not very satisfied with the support because they are not really quick."

More IBM Spectrum Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is most likely comparable."

"It is approximately $400 to purchase a virtual service outright."

"We only have the maintenance of three standard UDP licenses. Each license is 50 Euro. There are some additional costs for the storage and software but it has nothing to do with the UDP."

"I feel that the product is fairly priced."

"The price of StorageCraft ShadowProtect is competitive in the market."

"I do not work with the pricing or licensing issues of the solution for our organization."

"The pricing of the product can be considered to be reasonable enough for the Asian region."

"The solution is very expensive."

More Arcserve UDP pricing and cost advice

"The price of IBM Spectrum Protect is expensive and there is only a standard licensing fee."

"Going to IBM Tech University Conference saved me from making a major purchase of the wrong thing, which was very helpful."

"The pricing model of this solution is another difficult area, it's very sophisticated in the way they charge. It's based on PBU, which is a type of processor, how, many processors, and you need to put everything into an equation. However, they have different ways of charging or licensing. One way is a back-end volume or front-end volume, which is quite complicated."

"It is very scalable, but the downside is that it costs money."

"The pricing is a little expensive for our current employer, so they want to move to a cheaper solution."

"We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective."

"For my company, the tool is affordable and reasonable...I don't think most people know that when a company has large systems in place, the TCO is a lot lower."

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

More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Non Profit

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Major Differences Between These 4 Backup and Disaster Recovery Solutions?

Comparing the features of the four is not the right approach. You need to develop a list of requirements for backup and DR that are specific to your organization and then compare each of the four ...

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What do you like most about StorageCraft ShadowProtect?

The interface is very refined, works fine, and is very intuitive most of the time. Scalability is nice. The multi-tenancy feature is very welcome. The integration with Linux works fine too.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StorageCraft ShadowProtect?

Pricing for SPX MRP/MSP is under $400 per server (Single VM) with a 1-year subscription. After discounts, it could decrease by 20%-30%, and opting for a 3/5/10 server pack may offer even better (lo...

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

Veeam Data Platform vs Arcserve UDP

Compared 36% of the time

Acronis Cyber Protect vs Arcserve UDP

Compared 11% of the time

Rubrik vs Arcserve UDP

Compared 9% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Arcserve UDP

Compared 5% of the time

HPE StoreOnce vs Arcserve UDP

Compared 5% of the time

More Arcserve UDP Competitors

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 16% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 16% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 11% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 10% of the time

IBM Storage Protect vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Arcserve UDP

June 2025

Download Arcserve UDP product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Protect product report

Also Known As

StorageCraft ShadowProtect, StorageCraft Backup Analyzer

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Overview

Arcserve UDP is a comprehensive solution that empowers even a one-person IT department to protect virtual and physical environments with a high degree of simplicity. It allows you to design and manage your entire data protection strategy with a unified management console, and enables you to scale your data backup coverage as your organization grows with the push of a button.

Arcserve

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

ITPS, North Hertfordshire Homes, SEMIKRON, Kajaani University of Applied Sciences, Test Valley Borough Council, EK Services

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

Arcserve UDP vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

Free Report: Arcserve UDP vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

Find out what your peers are saying about Arcserve UDP vs. IBM Spectrum Protect and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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