Bacula Enterprise vs IBM Storage 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 #40 with an average rating of 8.5. Bacula Systems holds a 1.0% mindshare in BRS, compared to IBM’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Bacula Systems users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Bacula Enterprise

Read 10 Bacula Enterprise reviews

1,062 Views
907 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

IBM Storage Protect

Read 3 IBM Storage Protect reviews

376 Views
269 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Bacula Enterprise

IBM Storage Protect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

Bacula Enterprise and IBM Storage Protect are both prominent players in the backup and data protection market. Bacula Enterprise seems to have the upper hand due to its competitive pricing and ease of deployment, while IBM Storage Protect excels through its advanced features and robust performance, which justifies its higher cost.

Features: Bacula Enterprise supports diverse environments, offers superior scalability, and provides strong customer support. IBM Storage Protect offers comprehensive data protection features, advanced performance, and robust integration capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Bacula Enterprise needs a more intuitive configuration process, improved documentation, and enhanced ease of use. IBM Storage Protect could benefit from simplified management processes, more user-friendly features, and optimization of management capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Bacula Enterprise is noted for its straightforward deployment process and exceptional customer service. IBM Storage Protect's deployment can be challenging due to its complexity but benefits from commendable support.

Pricing and ROI: Bacula Enterprise offers more economical setup costs and strong ROI due to affordability and effectiveness. IBM Storage Protect, despite its higher initial costs, provides significant ROI through its robust feature set and reliability.

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

Buyer's Guide

Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Storage Protect

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 850,491 peers since 2012

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 (17th)

IBM Storage Protect

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

40th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 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 Storage Protect is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

Davilson Aguiar

Analista Tecnologia Banco de Dados at Centro de Gestão da Tecnologia da Informação

Very cost-effective and well organized with good compression

It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company. A managerial user who wants more information beyond the operational technician should be able to access it. It could include greater transparency regarding the volume of data trafficked on the network, as well as the expectation of deduplication. A more practical strategy could come with a backup policy model as a suggestion for both large and small companies. A simple suggestion is to visually implement the backup time as far as your physical media.

Read full review

Maik Zutz

Produktverantwortlicher Storage und Backup at BITMARCK TECHNIK GmbH

A stable enterprise solution for backup and restore

New workloads are not good for storage protect like container or virtual machines. IBM acknowledges that users and partners with companies do it better and integrate it into the product. It takes too much time to implement it in old Storage Protect. It have features for big databases and big data environments. Although, the product seems to be old fashioned, but it is stable, robust and works for the most use cases where a lot of data is to be protected. It could be easier to manage client data. You have to use configuration. It is not on modern architecture. They should change it on the client area. You can achieve a better environment using Protect. IBM tapes serves as an air gap, consumes less energy, and provides a resilient, stable environment with fewer infrastructure and environmental costs. Intergrating it can help store large amounts of data more cheaper than on disk.

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

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

"Bacula is pretty stable."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Overall, my experience with the solution is very positive, and I rate it a 9 out of 10."

"The tool's backup engine is very powerful. Previously, our client finished backup with HPE product in 48 hours. IBM Storage Protect completes backup in 8 hours."

"The best point about IBM Storage Protect is that it can use IBM tape environments, which we still use and will continue to use in the future."

Cons

"The initial setup could be a bit easier."

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

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

"The product should improve its GUI. It should also support Windows clustering."

"The solution is expensive."

"Some features are outdated as the product does not use the latest technologies. The graphical user interface, known as the operation center, is not very well designed. Additionally, IBM Storage Protect does not work well with virtual environments such as VMware and Hyper-V."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a perpetual license."

"This is an open-source solution."

"IBM Storage Protect is not expensive and fits the needs of all business types. The licensing is based on a capacity-based model. You can take a license for one, two, or three terabytes."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Backup and Recovery solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

850,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

University

10%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

24%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

10%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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?

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Storage Protect?

The best point about IBM Storage Protect is that it can use IBM tape environments, which we still use and will continue to use in the future.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Storage Protect?

IBM Storage Protect is generally an expensive tool. However, with good contracts with IBM or its partners, the cost might not be so high. New customers can expect very high prices.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Storage Protect?

Some features are outdated as the product does not use the latest technologies. The graphical user interface, known as the operation center, is not very well designed. Additionally, IBM Storage Pro...

See all answers

Comparisons

Bareos vs Bacula Enterprise

Compared 51% of the time

UrBackup vs Bacula Enterprise

Compared 17% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Bacula Enterprise

Compared 12% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Bacula Enterprise

Compared 4% of the time

QNAP Backup Solution vs Bacula Enterprise

Compared 3% of the time

More Bacula Enterprise Competitors

IBM Spectrum Protect vs IBM Storage Protect

Compared 63% of the time

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Storage Protect

Compared 23% of the time

IBM Storage Protect Plus vs IBM Storage Protect

Compared 15% of the time

More IBM Storage Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Backup and Recovery

April 2025

Download Bacula Enterprise product report

Buyer's Guide

Backup and Recovery

April 2025

Download IBM Storage Protect product report

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 Storage Protect is designed for data backup and recovery, ensuring protection of critical information and business continuity. It is ideal for managing large-scale datasets and offers compatibility across cloud and on-premises environments.

IBM Storage Protect provides robust data backup and recovery features, supporting multiple workloads while integrating effortlessly with different platforms. It is known for reliable performance, scalability for growing storage needs, and automation of repetitive tasks. Users find it effective in protecting expansive datasets through efficient deduplication.

What are the key features of IBM Storage Protect?

Data Backup and Recovery: Comprehensive data protection in diverse environments.
Integration: Seamless collaboration with various systems.
Scalability: Handles growing storage demands effectively.
Deduplication: Efficient data deduplication to optimize storage use.

What benefits or ROI should be considered when evaluating IBM Storage Protect?

Reliable Performance: Consistently protects multiple workloads.
Compatibility: Works well with cloud and on-premises systems.
Automation: Automates repetitive tasks to save time and resources.

IBM Storage Protect is implemented in various industries, supporting sectors with significant data management requirements like finance, healthcare, and retail. These industries benefit from its robust data protection, scalability, and ease of integration, making it a preferred choice for organizations with large and complex datasets.

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.

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Storage Protect

April 2025

Free Report: Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Storage Protect

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

DOWNLOAD NOW

850,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Storage Protect report.

See our list of best Backup and Recovery vendors.

We monitor all Backup and Recovery reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.