Cohesity DataProtect vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

Cohesity and IBM are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. Cohesity is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.3, while IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.3. Cohesity holds a 3.3% mindshare in BRS, compared to IBM’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Cohesity users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Cohesity DataProtect

Read 74 Cohesity DataProtect reviews

6,845 Views
4,445 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Protect

Read 149 IBM Spectrum Protect reviews

3,421 Views
2,509 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Cohesity DataProtect

IBM Spectrum Protect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect and Cohesity DataProtect are two leading data protection solutions. Cohesity DataProtect has the upper hand due to its flexibility and innovative features, though IBM Spectrum Protect has robust, time-tested capabilities.

Features: IBM Spectrum Protect offers comprehensive backup and recovery options, scalability, and integration with various platforms. Cohesity DataProtect provides cloud-native capabilities, simplified data management, and a modern approach to data protection.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Protect needs better integration with modern cloud services, enhanced ease of use, and modernized functionalities. Cohesity DataProtect requires more mature reporting tools, performance optimization for large datasets, and further polishing of existing features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Protect deployment can be complex and time-consuming, with customer service satisfactory but needing quicker response times. Cohesity DataProtect offers a smoother, quicker deployment experience and proactive, responsive support, making it more attractive for users prioritizing ease of use and support.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect has higher upfront costs, with long-term reliability and performance justifying the expense for some users. Cohesity DataProtect is cost-effective with a quicker ROI due to efficient resource utilization and lower initial setup costs, generally perceived as delivering better value for its price.

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

Buyer's Guide

Cohesity DataProtect vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

Download the complete report

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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 DataProtect

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

8th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Backup (8th)

IBM Spectrum Protect

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

14th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

149

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Cohesity DataProtect is 3.3%, down from 4.3% 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

Giovanni Golinelli.

Hybrid IT Architect at Quanture Spa

Easy to use, offers good scalability and responsive support

The deployment depends on the environment. Deploying on VMs is relatively simple. But for most of our customers, we implement physical clusters with at least three configured hosts using the existing model. So, it depends on the setup. Implementing DataProtect itself wasn't particularly challenging. One key requirement for successful DataProtect deployment is proper network configuration. If the network setup isn't right, you won't achieve optimal performance. We have developed a service for some of our customers where they implement an appliance or physical cluster of Cohesity at the customer site. Then, we use cloud clustering to replicate, and even in production, a second copy of the protected data. And in some cases, we have developed some disaster recovery procedures using Cohesity.

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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

"The solution is stable."

"No longer does it take several hours to backup a VM or troubleshoot a backup issue."

"It's stable."

"Within the system, we have rule-based access control, single sign-on, multifactor authentication, and basic identity and access management features."

"It offers an easy, quick backup and restore of files and VMs. Also, the "Google-like " search for files is awesome."

"The four independent node cluster architecture is redundant. It maintains data integrity and load balancing."

"By using their Helios Cloud service, you have all your clusters, no matter where they are located, in one web portal."

"It is also very easy to determine which VMs are being backed up and which ones aren't. This is helpful to make sure nothing is being missed."

More Cohesity DataProtect pros

"The most valuable feature is the backup speed."

"Disk-based implementation of a data protection solution for multiple sites is a better fit for my complex data protection needs."

"IBM Spectrum Protect is a scalable solution."

"Traditional archiving. One of our revenue streams involves maintaining archives of our customers' data for very long periods of time."

"IBM Spectrum Protect offers stable software and products."

"It allows us to have one interface."

"Traditional storage works perfectly with it."

"Enterprise-wide type of architecture supports a lot of different platforms."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pros

Cons

"Quality testing of upgrades should be somewhat improved."

"I like that Cohesity offers the chance to have data on-premises and on the cloud. All the data is automatically sent to the cloud."

"Cohesity cluster upgrades have not been as easy as a single button click. They are a manual process that requires upgrading each node into a cluster individually."

"This solution is only compatible with a limited number of storage arrays, including Pure and Cisco Hyperflex."

"We have Oracle databases running on Linux servers in our environment and we have found the Oracle backups were quite complex to setup."

"Cohesity DataProtect can improve in the area of databases. We have had some challenges with both Cohesity and Rubrik being able to effectively back up in a timely manner the SQL Oracle workloads."

"I would like to see Cohesity have the ability to do a file level restore from a Windows server, which is storing data on dynamic disk."

"The product is still young and is continually improving. There have been a couple of buggy releases in the software that have caused us minor issues, so possibly some better QA before releasing would prove to be useful. We have also been inquiring about new app and functionality via the Marketplace that was teased months back but has yet to come to fruition."

More Cohesity DataProtect cons

"Our customers would like to see metadata replication, tearing to tape, and more cloud capabilities."

"It can be improved for large file systems with many files. Spectrum Protect can restore large files very well, but if you're restoring millions of little files, it is not as great. At one point, we tried to implement the VMware module with it, and it was awful and terrible. I don't know if that has improved. If it hasn't, this would be one big improvement."

"The solution should have better integration with VMware and with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus."

"There needs to be a bit more automation."

"Restoring massive files is a very time-consuming process."

"Sometimes we experience trouble with the backup transfer of the control files."

"The software is complex; setup is complex."

"Its management part can be better and simplified. It is kind of a beast as compared to Commvault or Veeam, but they are more user-friendly. They are also easier to learn, whereas Spectrum Protect definitely takes time. They should simplify it. Our teams are pretty comfortable with it because we have been using it for a long time, but from the perspective of a new user who is evaluating or using this solution, it is definitely more complex in terms of manageability. Its monitoring could be improved so that it can even monitor the jobs that are scheduled by external schedulers. There are situations where a database team might decide to use their own schedulers, but currently, Spectrum Protect is not able to catch those jobs in the Operation Manager console."

More IBM Spectrum Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With respect to pricing, make sure that you look at both Rubrik and Cohesity as they are very similar and are quite competitive."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."

"Pricing, setup costs, etc. are pretty typical. The initial cost for Cohesity was less than other products the we evaluated. Cohesity's pricing does offer benefits as DR target costs are less than other solutions. You are not charged for DataProtect licensing for target DR data consumption."

"The solution's pricing is in the mid-range, where it's neither costly nor cheap."

"The tool's licensing costs are yearly. It is cheaper than other backup solutions."

"The pricing model is impressive and very effective."

"There is monthly licensing."

"Sizing is important and it is easy to overestimate."

More Cohesity DataProtect pricing and cost advice

"When compared to the cost of other enterprise products, it seems to be in the same range. However, compared to the cost of non-enterprise products, it is really high."

"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."

"Use capacity licensing. It's easier and cheaper."

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

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

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

"It's very complicated. Licensing is a pain."

"The solution is expensive."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

22%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

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 do you like most about Cohesity DataProtect?

Several features enable us to perform fast recovery, such as instant fast recovery. All our virtual machines protected with the product can be quickly restored to another healthy environment with m...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cohesity DataProtect?

I find Cohesity DataProtect to be expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cohesity DataProtect?

What areas have room for improvement? Is there anything that could be simplified to make it better?

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?

One point for improvement for IBM Spectrum Protect is security, as IBM has not been investing as much as in the past. There is a need for additional layers of security to fill the gaps, which is wh...

See all answers

Comparisons

Rubrik vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 25% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 16% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 6% of the time

HPE Zerto Software vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 2% of the time

More Cohesity DataProtect Competitors

Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 15% of the time

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 15% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 12% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 10% of the time

Dell NetWorker vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cohesity DataProtect

July 2025

Download Cohesity DataProtect product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Protect product report

Also Known As

Cohesity

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Overview

What is Cohesity DataProtect?

Cohesity DataProtect is a top-level, sophisticated, software-defined backup and recovery solution created for cloud environments. Cohesity DataProtect is made to hyperscale and is one the most thorough policy-based protection solutions available on the market today.

Cohesity DataProtect melds multiple-point products into a single software that is able to be deployed as on-premise or consumed as a service.

Top Features:

Hyperscale made easy: Cohesity DataProtect improves data protection by doing away with the need for backup silos and administers backup and recovery with a single user-friendly, easy-to-understand interface. Cohesity DataProtect provides extensive 24/7 enterprise-class protection for a large, varying set of sources, including virtual and physical servers, NAS and SaaS workloads, relational and distributed databases, and traditional and containerized applications.

Super fast recovery: Cohesity DataProtect offers near-zero recovery point objectives (RPOs) and near-instant recovery time objectives (RTOs) to satisfy your business service-level agreements (SLAs). Using Cohesity Helios’ unified data plane and control plane you can immediately search and recover data on any Cohesity cluster, located anywhere. DataProtect distinctively minimizes downtime by immediately mass restoring any amount of virtual machines (VMs) to any point in time, and lowers data protection costs by as much as 70% or more.

Backup as a Service: Feel free to take advantage of the elasticity of the public cloud and the cost-effective value of Cohesity DataProtect when delivered as a service. When you choose an OPEX option, you can eliminate the need for on-premises hardware. There is a SaaS option that will allow you to very simply configure your backup workloads and immediately begin protecting your vital all-important data and applications.

It’s as easy as: sign-up, connect, and protect!

Ransomware protection: Cohesity DataProtect offers stellar recovery at scale. The solution is so intuitive, it has machine learning-based anomaly detection to stop incidents before they happen. Cohesity DataProtection can provide immutable backups, Datalock write once, read many (WORM), encryption, and role-based access control (RBAC).

Cohesity DataProtect integrates well with many of today’s top solutions, including, but not limited to:

Hypervisors: VMware vSphere (5.5 and later), Microsoft Hyper-V (2019, 2016, 2012 R2), Nutanix AHV and RHeV

Kubernetes-based data and application state

Cloud: AWS EC2, Amazon RDS, Azure VM, and Google Compute

Physical: Windows, Linux(RHEL, CentOS, OEL, Debian, Ubuntu), AIX (7.x), and Solaris

Databases: Oracle (11g R2, 12c), Oracle RAC and SQL (2008 or later)

Distributed Databases (NoSQL and Hadoop): MongoDB, CouchbaseDB, Apache, Cassandra, Cloudera, and Hortonworks.

Bare Machine Recovery: Windows and Linux

Applications: MS Exchange (2010 SP3 or later), MSFT Active Directory, Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Teams, Groups), SalesForce (SFDC), and SAP HANA

Primary storage: Pure FlashArray, HPE Nimble, and Cisco Hyperflex

NAS: Pure FlashBlade, NetApp, Isilon, IBM GPFS, Google EFS, Elastifile, and generic solutions*

Reviews from Real Users

One reviewer, who is head of IT infrastructure at Kampmann says, “Cohesity really is a Next-Gen Data Management Software,” and goes on to indicate that Cohesity “works flawlessly with easy replication of backups and numerous supported backup sources.”

Another user, who is a senior network engineer at a legal firm, relates that "Cohesity is a robust and feature-rich solution"

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

Tribune Media

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 DataProtect vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

Free Report: Cohesity DataProtect vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

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

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