Cohesity Data Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

Cohesity and IBM are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. Cohesity is ranked #39 with an average rating of 8.7, while IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.4. Cohesity holds a 0.4% mindshare in BRS, compared to IBM’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cohesity users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Cohesity Data Cloud

Read 8 Cohesity Data Cloud reviews

487 Views
261 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

Cohesity Data Cloud

IBM Spectrum Protect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect and Cohesity Data Cloud offer robust solutions for data management. Cohesity Data Cloud seems to have the upper hand due to its modern features and ease of use.

Features: IBM Spectrum Protect is valued for its high scalability, backup efficiency, and comprehensive security features. Cohesity Data Cloud is appreciated for its simplified data management, rapid recovery, and cloud integration. Cohesity's modern architecture and ease of use give it an edge over IBM Spectrum Protect regarding features.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Protect users often cite complexity and a steep learning curve as areas needing improvement. Additional improvements are needed in its user interface and performance optimization. Cohesity Data Cloud users highlight the need for enhanced reporting and analytics, increased backup speed, and better multi-cloud support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Protect's deployment is known to be complex, requiring significant time and expertise, with customer service receiving mixed reviews. Cohesity Data Cloud offers straightforward deployment and is backed by strong customer support. Cohesity's ease of deployment and supportive customer service make it a more favorable choice in this category.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect has a higher initial setup cost but offers good ROI through long-term reliability. Cohesity Data Cloud features competitive pricing and quicker ROI due to its operational efficiency and reduced management overhead. Users find Cohesity Data Cloud's pricing and ROI more appealing in comparison to IBM Spectrum Protect.

To learn more, read our detailed Cohesity Data Cloud vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cohesity Data Cloud 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

Cohesity Data Cloud

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

39th

Average Rating

9.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Backup (35th), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (6th)

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 Cohesity Data Cloud is 0.4%, up from 0.1% 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

AmarpreetSingh

Technical Architect at Wipro Limited

Offers improved data protection and security with indirect ROI

The pricing of the Cloud is on the higher side, and it should be cost-effective enough to compete with native solutions. Currently, Cohesity Cloud seems very costly compared to native backups. Although this is an emerging tool and there is room for growth, it needs to mature further. There is an AI feature, however, it is still in the development phase and requires substantial improvements.

Read full review

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

"It's very regimented and fast. It does local backup, cloud backup, long-term coverage, and disaster recovery."

"I definitely recommend this tool to others due to its simplicity, security, features, and flexibility."

"The clone feature is very nice. You can restore workloads onto Cohesity's storage, which is also nice to have when you don't have enough space to restore on the server."

"The hyper-converged architecture and scalability are hugely important for growing service companies."

"Its big data and archive data features are the features that I have found most valuable. I can use it in a big virtual environment."

"I find the most important feature to be data protection."

"It is easy to install and use."

"Our data center size occupancy for Cohesity appliance is reduced by 70% when we installed Cohesity."

More Cohesity Data Cloud pros

"The solution offers very good flexibility."

"What I found most valuable in IBM Spectrum Protect is that it allows you to back up physical machines, and its proxy feature lets you back up virtual machines."

"Scalability: Our customers are able to grow the product without having to buy additional hardware, so it is very scalable."

"The solution is mostly stable."

"The way it covers backup and archive needs. The flexibility of backup copy group always allows me to cover the customer's requests."

"From a tech perspective, utilizing deduplication is one of the most valuable features."

"Space efficient data reduction, using progressive incremental forever in combination with deduplication and compression."

"Good user interface."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pros

Cons

"The pricing of the Cloud is on the higher side, and it should be cost-effective enough to compete with native solutions."

"In terms of functionality, Helios has been effective, but sometimes it doesn't show the exact cluster name for backups."

"There is limited support for legacy systems, which is something that could be improved."

"The primary drawback is the need to transfer large amounts of data to the cloud via an internet connection, requiring significant bandwidth."

"The pricing of the Cloud is on the higher side, and it should be cost-effective enough to compete with native solutions."

"Their documentation portal is not up to date for newer releases and I strongly recommend Cohesity to increase their efforts on the documentation portal."

"The initial setup can be complex, depending on the environment."

"The limitation that I see in Cohesity is that the minimum sized node is 36 terabytes, which is more than a small customer needs."

More Cohesity Data Cloud cons

"It needs better connectivity with other non-IBM application hardware and non-IBM platforms."

"I would like a little more ease with the virtual platforms, because it is a huge thing that is coming up."

"The most important feature which I wish to be added involves the GUI, the user interface."

"RTO is a huge gap for us. If we had a disaster scenario and had to recover a bunch of stuff from tape, the RTO would be too long for us."

"We are not so happy with the technical support because dealing with them is not easy. We have a very complicated environment, therefore I understand for a support person that it is not easy to troubleshoot it."

"The administration tools for GI need improvement, as the current assessment suggests shortcomings in the back-end system."

"Their support is lacking. I've talked to their developers and stuff in the last couple of weeks and they reassure me that some people have retired, and they're working on getting that bumped back up. But the support lacks a lot to be desired at this point."

"I would love to see something which allows us to do an auto restart of backup jobs."

More IBM Spectrum Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Regarding pricing, it's very costly and I rate it a four."

"It's priced properly for the market."

"Competing products sometimes use deceptive marketing to make their products seem a lot cheaper. Comparing apples-to-apples, DataPlatform wins out."

"We chose IBM Spectrum Protect, because they actually have something called MSP pricing, which means managed services provider pricing. The pricing was attractive, and it seems to be a platform that IBM is totally investing on in terms of new functions and new capabilities."

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

"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."

"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."

"IBM Spectrum Protect can be considered an averagely-priced product."

"The licensing is varied. If we have small environments (not many TB being managed) it is best to license by PVUs (depending on the number of cores of the machine). If we manage many TBs we look at licensing by capacity which allows us to use all the agents of the product."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cohesity DataPlatform?

While Cohesity Data Cloud is more costly in the long term compared to physical tapes, it offers value by meeting compliance needs and providing protection against ransomware attacks. The pricing is...

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What needs improvement with Cohesity Imanis Data?

The primary drawback is the need to transfer large amounts of data to the cloud via an internet connection, requiring significant bandwidth. Reading data from the cloud can incur additional costs, ...

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What is your primary use case for Cohesity Imanis Data?

The primary use case for Cohesity Data Cloud is to offer an additional layer of protection for backup data, which I can restore if needed. It is a managed service that allows me to set up and confi...

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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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Palantir Foundry vs Cohesity Data Cloud

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Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cohesity Data Cloud

June 2025

Download Cohesity Data Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Protect product report

Also Known As

Imanis Data, DataPlatform, Cohesity Helios

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Overview

Consolidate your backups, file shares, object stores and data for dev/test and analytics on a web-scale data management platform.

Cohesity

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

Navis, 1st Security Bank, Brown University, WestLotto

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

Cohesity Data Cloud vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

Free Report: Cohesity Data Cloud vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

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