Bacula Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

Bacula Systems and IBM are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. Bacula Systems is ranked #24 with an average rating of 10.0, while IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.4. Bacula Systems holds a 1.0% mindshare in BRS, compared to IBM’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Bacula Systems users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Bacula Enterprise

Read 10 Bacula Enterprise reviews

1,063 Views
819 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Protect

Read 150 IBM Spectrum Protect reviews

3,616 Views
2,660 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Bacula Enterprise

IBM Spectrum Protect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect and Bacula Enterprise compete in the data protection category. Based on user reviews, IBM Spectrum Protect is favored for deployment and customer service, while Bacula Enterprise is preferred for pricing and feature robustness.

Features: Users praise IBM Spectrum Protect for its comprehensive data backup and recovery features, scalability, and reliability. Bacula Enterprise stands out for its flexible and customizable backup solutions, extensive platform support, and advanced scheduling capabilities.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Protect users mention improvements needed in documentation quality, system setup complexity, and a steep initial learning curve. Bacula Enterprise users point to the need for enhanced technical support, better integration capabilities, and more effective user support structures.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Protect users commend the straightforward deployment process and professional customer service. Bacula Enterprise users report a more technical deployment requiring specialized knowledge but value its extensive documentation. Customer service received mixed reviews for Bacula Enterprise.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect users find it pricier with a slower ROI due to higher initial setup costs. Bacula Enterprise offers cost-effectiveness and faster ROI, seen as a budget-friendly option with competitive features. Despite higher costs, IBM's feature set and support merit consideration for more extensive enterprise needs.

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

Buyer's Guide

Bacula Enterprise 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

Bacula Enterprise

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

24th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Backup (16th)

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 Bacula Enterprise is 1.0%, up from 0.5% 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

GiovanniRamirez

Senior IT Consultant at Xerif

Solid backup tool with good scalability

The last scenario in which I used Bacula was for a customer who needed some open-source tool which could support encryption at that time. We managed to convince the customer to use Bacula to deploy it in their environment It was a very good project. The Bacula concept, topology, and networking…

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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

"Bacula is pretty stable."

"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."

"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."

"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."

"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."

"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."

"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."

"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."

"You can scale the product."

"The archiving feature is the most valuable aspect of the solution."

"The product helps us do data protection and restoration for disaster recovery (DR)."

"This solution has improved our organization through better file and database recovery."

"The best functional system I utilize is integrated with the data domain and DIGS backup solution, which makes it easily manageable and comprehensive."

"The feature that I have found the most valuable is that IBM Spectrum Protect is highly integrated with IBM ESS. In addition, it allows us to back up our virtual servers directly to take VM snapshots. It runs on Linux as well."

"I love the TDP for VMware because of the web interface and the possibilities provided by this tool. It's amazing."

"The software-defined ability to do data reduction through deduplication and compression, as well as being able to replicate data to a cloud container."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pros

Cons

"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."

"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."

"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."

"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."

"The initial setup could be a bit easier."

"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."

"Bacula needs a graphical user interface because, for administrators, the command-line interface is okay, but for the average user it is not very easy."

"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."

"The licensing isn't very clear. They should work to simply or clarify the cost structure."

"I find the solution somewhat difficult to use with virtual environments or VMware."

"Perhaps if they could add replication to a second site or third site from the same console, that would be helpful. Currently, we have to connect to another console."

"There were scalability issues only in the brand new features which were recently released."

"Stability is very good now. It used to be rocky years ago."

"I would like to advance reporting and analytics for the platform to see how much data is coming into the platform. how much data is expiring everyday, and what tape savings we are getting through reclamation."

"There is room for improvement in IBM Spectrum Protect, especially regarding its support for virtual environment backups."

"We would like to see bare-metal restorers."

More IBM Spectrum Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a perpetual license."

"This is an open-source solution."

"It is fairly reasonable as compared to other solutions in the market."

"There may be an advantage to going with IBM in terms of pricing. They have a pay-as-you-grow policy, so there is no need to take one license for the entire datacenter. You can start with small licenses and then grow, and pay, as you use more."

"It is expensive."

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

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

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

"We have capacity licensing. We use the front end. The capacity licensing is pretty okay on the licensing price. I used to use the old PVU-based licensing in the early environment, but now we use capacity-based licensing."

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

More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

University

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bacula Enterprise?

Bacula is more expensive than various other solutions. It’s almost completely commercial now. Products like Veeam software are much more expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Bacula Enterprise?

Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Bacula Enterprise?

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

Bareos vs Bacula Enterprise

Compared 50% of the time

UrBackup vs Bacula Enterprise

Compared 16% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Bacula Enterprise

Compared 13% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Bacula Enterprise

Compared 4% of the time

HPE StoreOnce vs Bacula Enterprise

Compared 1% of the time

More Bacula Enterprise Competitors

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 17% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 17% 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

More IBM Spectrum Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Backup and Recovery

May 2025

Download Bacula Enterprise product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Protect product report

Also Known As

No data available

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Overview

Bacula Enterprise is a highly scalable, especially robust and secure data backup and recovery software. Its unique low cost subscription model empowers data centers to truly escape data volume price traps. With a high degree of flexibility and customizability, Bacula offers native integration with a wide range of hypervisors, databases, file systems, cloud interfaces and containers. High numbers of enterprise organizations worldwide (incl. NASA, Bank of Austria, Swisscom or Sky PLC) have adopted Bacula Enterprise backup software in mission critical environments because of its advanced features and ability to handle high data volume at very low cost.

Bacula Systems

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

NASA, SwissCom, Navisite, Turner Studios, Bank Austria, Caixa Bank, SdV Plurimedia, Leibniz University Hannover, Zeta Global, Tricore, NetLog, Siemens, LocaWeb, wbsGo, itesys, Queens School of Computing, Escrypt.

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

Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

Free Report: Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

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

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