Carbonite Server vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

OpenText and IBM are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. OpenText is ranked #44 with an average rating of 8.0, while IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.4. OpenText holds a 0.6% mindshare in BRS, compared to IBM’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of OpenText users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Carbonite Server

Read 7 Carbonite Server reviews

1,004 Views
547 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Protect

Read 150 IBM Spectrum Protect reviews

3,616 Views
2,660 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Carbonite Server

IBM Spectrum Protect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect and Carbonite Server are leading data protection solutions. IBM Spectrum Protect seems to have the upper hand due to its scalability and robust performance, while Carbonite Server is favored for ease of use and simplicity.

Features: IBM Spectrum Protect offers comprehensive backup and recovery options, integration capabilities, and support for various platforms. Carbonite Server provides straightforward configuration, automated processes, and easy integration for small to mid-sized environments.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Protect could benefit from enhanced cloud integration, more intuitive management tools, and user-friendly interfaces. Carbonite Server requires more advanced features, better support for complex environments, and improved scalability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Protect is demanding to deploy and requires in-depth technical knowledge but is supported by comprehensive customer service. Carbonite Server offers a smoother installation process with minimal technical expertise but has mixed customer service experiences.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect has a higher initial setup cost but provides substantial ROI for large enterprises through extensive administration capabilities. Carbonite Server is more cost-effective for small to mid-sized businesses, offering a quicker ROI due to lower setup costs.

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

Buyer's Guide

Carbonite Server 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

Carbonite Server

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

44th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Backup (30th)

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 Carbonite Server is 0.6%, up from 0.6% 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

Dale Dirkes

President at DIAD Consulting, Inc.

A simple, efficient, reliable product

The efficiency and convenience are excellent. The pricing is very good. It shows you what has been updated via little green dots. The solution is very automatic. I don't have to worry about it. It was easy to set up. Technical support has been helpful in the past. The solution has been problem-free.

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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

"Easy verification of things is the most valuable feature."

"I find the BMR/image and the recovery pieces are valuable."

"It seems reliable and easy to use."

"Technical support handled all our issues quickly and effectively."

"The Granular Restore of SQL feature has been a lifesaver more times than I can count. One of the main reasons for looking at Carbonite was their support for platforms like AIX and AS/400 Series."

"The solution is a free engine to help work with the container."

"It does not slow down your computer or use a lot of resources as it works."

"The efficiency and convenience are excellent."

More Carbonite Server pros

"In general, the solution is quite user-friendly. The GUI is very nice."

"Good deduplication and compression features."

"The ability to migrate between media over a long period of time. My customers are long-time users, and they have benefited from being able to move between tiers. They have been able to do this within the product."

"I've had no problems with the stability of this solution."

"We have been using it for several years, and it is quite reliable and predictable. We are quite comfortable with this solution. They're coming up with new features as well. It has good scalability, and it provides good integrations with business-critical applications or databases, such as SAP HANA. It works as expected, and we don't see any issues."

"It helps our customers protect their data, keep it long-term, and feel pretty secure about it, basically sleeping well at night."

"Reliability: It has never had a problem with backups or restores. If you store something, it is there."

"Replication processes with container storage pools allow reduction of storage space and network bandwidth, using deduplication and compression."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pros

Cons

"The Hyper-V backup has room for improvement."

"It could be a little bit easier or faster to be able to access data files without having to download anything."

"The support for object storage isn't quite there yet. Its public cloud support can be improved. I would love to see the public cloud support for object storage, and it would be great, but what I always hear from the folks at Carbonite is that in a lot of cases, it directly competes with their cloud offering. So, I don't know when or where that will go or if that will go anywhere, but we are hopeful to see something. The dashboard is a little outdated. If they gave it a facelift and put some better design around their dashboard, that would be tremendous. I generally care less about the visual aesthetics of an application as long as it does what it needed to do, which is true in the case of this solution. We also have the Microsoft 365 platform. Because they're two separate platforms, I have to log in to my Microsoft platform to manage it, and I have to log into my Carbonite server backup platform to manage it. Having these two coexist together in one management console is really what we're looking for, but we went for it knowing this. We also knew that there would be some integration coming down the road. So, we're again hoping to see some of that coming in 2021."

"They do not yet have USB recovery but they are adding it in coming releases."

"In the next release I would like to see an improvement in the auto failover option."

"The only thing that I would like to see improved is related to marketing. Currently, it is very difficult to find the right paper and stuff for me. Their marketing department should provide better information because currently, it is very difficult to find information on the internet. It was bought over by OpenText, and you won't be able to find a lot of information about this solution on their site. They should also provide training facilities for commercial purposes. Some of my colleagues recently went for pilot training, and they were technical. If I want to get trained, the training has to be more commercial. Currently, there is no such training for users like me."

"The stability has room for improvement."

"We recently had a situation where we quickly got code, and the number of tapes exceeded the library capacity so we were waiting a while to change. We got a fix for this right away."

"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 need to do a better job on Windows, because if you are running Windows, the scalability is more limited than AIX and Linux."

"I would not recommend the tool to others because it is a really complex product."

"It doesn't integrate with storage pools, with a normal pool. I'd like to see that."

"IBM's support hasn't been so good in the last few years."

"Enhancements are required for backing up our virtual environment."

"We have run into some periods where we have found some tape issues which were causing us problems, but we resolved them. For some reason, we had a bunch of drives go offline on our disk storage (our virtual library)."

More IBM Spectrum Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open source."

"We pay 9,000 dollars per year for our license."

"The pricing is between $120 and $150 per year."

"Its price is reasonable."

"The licensing fees are on a yearly basis, which for us it is about R400,000 (approximately $27,000 USD)."

"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."

"The platform is neither highly priced nor inexpensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."

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

"It is really expensive. Its price is not good for Latin America. Its price is good for the United States or Europe."

"The solution is expensive."

"That's a hard estimate. It depends on the licensing, the hardware, and other stuff, but it is fairly expensive. It is generally more expensive than other solutions."

"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

24%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Real Estate/Law Firm

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

What do you like most about Carbonite Server?

I find the BMR/image and the recovery pieces are valuable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Carbonite Server?

The ability to perform instant recovery would be a game changer. For a large user base, the creation of user accounts at this time is a little cumbersome, there isn't any Single-Sign-On (SSO) integ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Carbonite Server?

I work for a managed services provider, and we supply the solution for various sized customers.

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

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Backup

June 2025

Download Carbonite Server product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Protect product report

Also Known As

Carbonite Recover Backup

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Overview

Carbonite Server securely replicates data to the local backup server while securing a second copy in the cloud. Granular restore and local failover options ensure rapid recovery and minimal data loss. With integrated hardware and cloud failover for critical systems, Carbonite Server provides reliable data protection.

OpenText

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

INLINE Commercial Construction, Hamilton County

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

Carbonite Server vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

Free Report: Carbonite Server vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

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