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Azure Backup vs IBM Spectrum Protect 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

Azure Backup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
10th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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 Azure Backup is 3.3%, down from 4.7% 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

RituparnaBhattacharya - PeerSpot reviewer
Achieve cost savings and efficiency with high-level restore capabilities
I use Azure Backup mainly for backing up virtual machines The feature I find most effective in Azure Backup is the high-level restore. Additionally, it has a good impact on our cost savings and operational efficiency as it is a low-cost solution. The area that I believe needs improvement in…
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Azure Backup is good because it is entirely cloud-based, which means that you can be 99.9% sure that your backup is safe."
"You have the flexibility to encrypt your backups and choose the storage capacity you're comfortable paying for."
"It is a stable solution...It is a highly scalable solution."
"The best aspect of the solution is its backup functionality."
"The most valuable feature is the ease in which it backs up our data."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is that it is easy to create a backup by using Azure Backup. It also has a good user interface and nice features for sending notifications when any backup fails or there is a change in the status of virtual machines."
"I like the product's restoration cases."
"The backup features are very useful."
"The product is always stable and reliable."
"When I have to do disaster recoveries, I can do it with this tool."
"It is a very stable solution."
"It is pretty easy to use and maintain."
"It is a really scalable solution. We can scale it up. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
"It protects our data. That is what it is there for."
"You can do restores very quickly. You can mount a drive and restore it right from the drive."
"It's very robust and has been on the market for a long time."
 

Cons

"The compression ratio of the backup data should be improved."
"The support for Office365 backup is atrocious and is something that has to be improved."
"For companies frequently accessing data or not using Microsoft Azure, the solution may not be very helpful."
"The solution should involve more redundancy types in the backup storage and support open-source OS."
"On-prem can be complex to set up but the cloud is simple."
"It still does not have a lot of customization, especially if your workloads are not in Azure."
"The tool's backup should be faster. Azure Backup's support should be faster."
"Azure Backup needs improvements in allowing more specific backup options rather than just full VM snapshots. It lacks features for cybersecurity, such as ransomware protection."
"They are behind on many things, especially security. They are catching up a little bit now, but the competitors are doing better security-wise. There should be malware detection and prevention and higher security."
"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."
"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."
"They can include more cloud-enriching features. I would like IBM Spectrum Protect to have the functionality for backing up a VM directly in Azure. I would like to be able to back up a VM directly in Azure without spinning up a Hyper-V cluster and backing up the virtual server."
"An area for improvement would be the ease of use - the GUI is not up to the mark compared to other products in the market."
"It's difficult in terms of the configuration at set up. In our case, it required another admin, one person dedicated to the backup."
"In the next version of the solution, I would like to see cloud support."
"The version that we had when I first started made it look really bad. We are talking about commands that should have run in two seconds, but instead took four to eight hours. Other components were sluggish."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is pretty good, maybe $30 for a machine, I can't complain."
"The product is neither too expensive nor too cheap."
"There is a cost per terabyte for using this solution."
"The price is somewhat high and could be lower."
"It is incredibly cost-effective and offers fixed pricing, with no additional fees for the licensing."
"Overall, its cost is better because the VMs are already there, and whatever you back up, there is only the additional cost of that storage, whereas if I have to use Avamar in Azure, a separate cost is there for the Avamar server, and in addition, whatever I take as a backup, there is a separate license with Avamar for that. So, there is a double cost if we have to use Avamar in the cloud."
"It is a very cheap cloud solution."
"Azure Backup is a product that is priced at a cheap rate, and it is a great tool."
"It's very complicated. Licensing is a pain."
"We have been at our size for a few years. We are not really looking to battle the licensing costs, as this is our primary system."
"Licensing IBM Spectrum Protect can be somewhat confusing for new users due to the options available, such as licensing on a capacity or per server basis."
"That's no longer my department, but I have some past experience with licensing. It is not cheap. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of licensing. In terms of additional costs, there is management overhead. It is a complex solution and a lot of work goes into managing clients. It has gotten better over the years, but compared to its competitor, it is still heavy on management overhead."
"The license model that they have at IBM, which is due to volume, from a certain volume onward is not the right license model."
"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."
"Its licensing is complicated. It goes by CPUs, and it is pretty expensive as well."
"The licensing fees are on a yearly basis, which for us it is about R400,000 (approximately $27,000 USD)."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Azure Backup differ from Veeam Backup & Replication?
Veeam has a version for Azure but there are organizations, like ours, that are considering moving to an Azure environment and wonder if Azure Backup is better than Veeam Backup and Replication (Vee...
What do you like most about Azure Backup?
Azure Backup is easy to configure and restore.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Backup?
The pricing of Azure Backup is fine; it is a low-cost solution.
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?
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 dash...
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Russell Reynolds Associates, Somerset County Council, Kardem, PCL Construction
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Backup vs. IBM Spectrum Protect and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,579 professionals have used our research since 2012.