Dell Avamar vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

Dell Technologies and IBM are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. Dell Technologies is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.3, while IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.4. Dell Technologies holds a 3.3% mindshare in BRS, compared to IBM’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Dell Avamar

Read 89 Dell Avamar reviews

5,970 Views
4,238 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Protect

Read 150 IBM Spectrum Protect reviews

3,616 Views
2,660 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Dell Avamar

IBM Spectrum Protect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect and Dell Avamar both offer robust data protection and backup solutions. Users tend to prefer IBM Spectrum Protect for pricing and support, but Dell Avamar is favored for its advanced features, making it a strong choice for handling large data sets.

Features: IBM Spectrum Protect users note its scalability, comprehensive data protection, and reliable backup capabilities. Dell Avamar is recognized for its efficient deduplication, seamless integration with existing systems, and superior handling of large data sets.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Protect users suggest enhancements in reporting capabilities, performance during peak loads, and user interface. Dell Avamar users recommend better support for cloud environments, enhanced user experience, and streamlined update processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Protect has a relatively complex deployment process but offers strong customer support. Dell Avamar is easier to deploy and has responsive customer service, giving it an edge in deployment.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect offers competitive setup costs and a favorable ROI over time. Dell Avamar has higher setup costs, but its advanced features justify the investment for many users.

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

Buyer's Guide

Dell Avamar 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

Dell Avamar

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

7th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Deduplication Software (5th)

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 Dell Avamar is 3.3%, down from 3.6% 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

Ayodeji Oyewole

Managing Director at Atlantic factorial

Reliable with good backups but has occasional failures

I use Dell Avamar primarily for backup and recovery The most valuable feature for me is the backup functionality. It gives large enterprises the comfort of knowing their workloads are being backed up. There are instances where backups fail on certain applications, which is an area that could be…

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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.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup."

"The solution is easy to use and has high performance."

"Scheduling is valuable. It does a good job of backing up, and it does a good job of restoring. Nobody has got a problem with that. The agents are well supported."

"The product is very powerful and offers very good performance."

"I have found the product to be scalable."

"The function I find most valuable in Dell Avamar is its ability to take differential backups for users. This feature is very effective for both backup and restore operations. We've had multiple cases where we needed to restore files directly from Avamar, and it worked perfectly. The Delta feature, which captures changes in user files, is particularly useful."

"Every product is good and bad, but its claim to fame is that it is scalable. We're doing more than 3,000 VMs. Every single night a complete image backup to disks and replication are easily done in under four hours."

"The deduplication feature is the best aspect of the solution."

More Dell Avamar pros

"Good user interface."

"Its flexibility is valuable. It is a very flexible solution. There are always more ways than one to do something. It is a software solution, which means you can buy your own hardware and expand it whenever you want. You are not boxed in or locked into something you've bought and outgrown. You can always expand it."

"One of the features which is most interesting in Spectrum Protect is the ability to scale out to great environments. This is something that not many vendors have on the market."

"It scales from very small to very large. It is easily the most scalable product out there."

"It protects our data. That is what it is there for."

"It is a very good and mature enterprise product. Once it is set up and everything is put in, you don't have to manage it. It actually runs automatically by itself."

"Forever incremental - allows TSM to optimize storage needs."

"It is very stable after deployment and will perform in a steady state."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pros

Cons

"The stability could improve, a lot of scheduled backups failed at one time."

"The UI is quite old. We've been using this UI since last year, and they haven't changed it. It would be better to update the UI periodically and create attractive dashboards from an administrative point of view."

"The client caches and deduplication system have a few problems."

"We have had a lot of problems with the Dell EMC Avamar solution. The snapshots are not being erased after backup."

"In my opinion, the user interface and the user friendliness could be improved. The specific thing I have in mind are the graphics, which are not quite user-friendly."

"The technical support from Dell is very poor, especially in terms of response time."

"Compared with Cohesity or Rubrik, which have some continuous data protection for backup and replication, this solution tends to lack in this area."

"Dell hasn't done a good job at handling these upgrades, or the way EMC used to handle them."

More Dell Avamar cons

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

"We would like to see cloud integration."

"For Spectrum Protect Plus, I would like to see more enhanced reporting features and integration with Spectrum Protect."

"The initial setup is complex."

"The administration interface should implement more functionalities that exist only in the command line and needs improvement in how some reports are created."

"IBM Spectrum Protect does have a lot of the features that we need, but I think they need to improve their backup virtualization and backup for container."

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

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

More IBM Spectrum Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Dell Avamar, including its virtual add-ons and cloud-based offerings, is cheaper than other solutions, but in the end, the price still depends on your use case. Price-wise, I'm rating Dell Avamar as six out of ten."

"It is easy to use."

"The price is fair."

"On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing policy of Dell Avamar as five. The solution has a very good price, and a lot of improvements were done to it."

"The current pricing is generally satisfactory."

"Dell Avamar is free when we deploy the data protection. When we order data protection, this software is included in the hardware."

"There is a license required for this solution."

"The cost is high."

More Dell Avamar pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The licensing fees are between $8,000 and $10,000 per year."

"The solution's pricing is fair. Price-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."

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

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

"We pay for a terabyte license to support our backend usage."

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

"It can be perceived as expensive since it is designed for enterprise use."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

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's the difference between Dell EMC Avamar and Dell EMC NetWorker?

From the very beginning, Dell EMC NetWorker considers users and those who might potentially become users. In terms of both pricing and setup, this product offers an experience that is significantly...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC Avamar?

The cost is very significant, and it could be lower.

See all answers

What do you like most about Dell Avamar?

Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup.

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

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs Dell Avamar

Compared 34% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Dell Avamar

Compared 15% of the time

Dell NetWorker vs Dell Avamar

Compared 9% of the time

Rubrik vs Dell Avamar

Compared 6% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Dell Avamar

Compared 6% of the time

More Dell Avamar 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 12% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 10% of the time

IBM Storage Protect vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell Avamar

June 2025

Download Dell Avamar product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Protect product report

Also Known As

Avamar

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Overview

Dell Avamar data protection software delivers flexible and efficient backup and recovery operations that can scale from daily backup protection for endpoints to high-performance protection for large enterprises with diverse applications and workloads. With application consistent recovery, automation and fast backup and restores, Avamar can help you meet your SLAs and optimize your backup and recovery processes

If you are deploying all or part of your backup environment to the cloud, Avamar enables you to make the most of your cloud investment, enabling replication, disaster recovery and long-term retention for customers using AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud.

Avamar is available as part of Dell Data Protection Suite, which offers comprehensive data protection software applications and tools. Avamar is delivered as software and as a virtual edition.

Dell Technologies

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

Dodge County, St Laurence's College, FieldCore (a GE Company), Comanche County Memorial Hospital, Getronics, Lewisville Independent School District, EnvisionRxOptions, Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions

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

Dell Avamar vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

Free Report: Dell Avamar vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

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

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