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Dell Data Protection Suite vs IBM Storage Protect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 16, 2025

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 Data Protection Suite
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
80th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Storage Protect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Dell Data Protection Suite is 0.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Storage Protect is 1.8%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Storage Protect1.8%
Dell Data Protection Suite0.5%
Other97.7%
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Kalpesh Pawar - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Head - Cloud Services at Softcell Technologies Limited
Centralized data protection has improved compliance and reduces sensitive data exposure
Dell Data Protection Suite offers full disk encryption, data loss prevention, centralized policy management, advanced threat detection, and role-based access control. Dell Data Protection Suite has positively impacted the organization by strengthening the data security posture through consistent enforcement of encryption and DLP across endpoints and servers. It has reduced the risk of data leakage, simplified compliance reporting, and lowered operational overhead through centralized policy and key management across multiple customer environments. Since deploying Dell Data Protection Suite, there has been a 40% reduction in data-related security incidents, mainly due to enforced encryption and DLP controls. Compliance audits are completed 30% faster because of centralized reporting and audit logs. Operational effort has been reduced by automating policy enforcement across endpoints and cloud workloads, resulting in measurable cost and time savings.
reviewer2787573 - PeerSpot reviewer
Interim Head of Infrastructure at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Backup coverage has supported immutable protection and now needs a more modern, intuitive interface
IBM Storage Protect is from a previous generation of backup software. In those days, backup software was complex in setting up and complex to manage. The new software, such as Rubrik, is very easy to use and more relatable to younger engineers because its interface design is more similar to Office 365 and the newer controls and labels that we are accustomed to. The difficulty that we now have with IBM Storage Protect is that for this day and age, compared to other products that are out there, it seems complex. If we look back 15 years ago, all enterprise class backup software was complex, so IBM was not any different. However, many of these older systems, such as Commvault, still have the same complaint that they are very complex because they have tried to keep that same interface and the same way it works. This suits them, but it probably needed a complete overhaul to bring it into the ease of use that we have with modern software. However, that upgrade has not been done. IBM Storage Protect has not been upgraded into a modern platform. It still looks a legacy platform.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I'd rate the solution ten out of ten."
"Since deploying Dell Data Protection Suite, there has been a 40% reduction in data-related security incidents, mainly due to enforced encryption and DLP controls."
"Dell Data Protection Suite is a comprehensive suite offering virus-free and ransomware-free data protection."
"The main feature of this product is a flexible architecture and functionality that allows you to solve problems of any complexity and scale. Most importantly, it is not just a product that simply makes a backup, but it restores and saves a large number of services in critical situations. By the way, it works fine with different types of clouds, supports S3."
"Overall, my experience with the solution is very positive, and I rate it a 9 out of 10."
"Technical support is okay. We have not had many issues with them."
"It is a very mature product."
"In the past, one of the most valuable features, and the biggest advantage, was the incremental forever feature. Not many other backup vendors provided that. In the pre-virtualization environment, it was very robust and simple technology, especially writing to tape."
"The platform has valuable stability."
"The main thing is to keep the data safe and in files, keep it on tape ready for a request from a bank, and it is working perfectly with all our hardware."
"It helps our customers protect their data, keep it long-term, and feel pretty secure about it, basically sleeping well at night."
 

Cons

"While Dell DPS is a powerful solution, it is expensive, which allows competitors to find their place in the market. The deployment is complex and not simplified, requiring professional expertise."
"The lack of documentation has been a frustrating point regarding improvements needed for Dell Data Protection Suite."
"While Dell DPS is a powerful solution, it is expensive, which allows competitors to find their place in the market."
"Integration with some applications in the healthcare field could be added, as that is a big part of our business."
"It is not easy to manage like other products in the market. It is okay only if you are command-line driven. Even though the operation center is there, it doesn't provide a single view of everything. You have to, for example, use TSMManager on top of it, which gives you a far better management capability, but it is a third-party product. Its management needs to be improved. There should be an HTML or graphical interface. It is a very difficult product. For example, you have a backup policy where you want a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly policy standard. It is an old kind of system where you have to keep retention for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly backups, which is very difficult in IBM Spectrum Protect. In other products, in a matter of five minutes, you can configure such a policy. In TSM, it takes you one, two, or three days because you need to configure a node for each of them. If you have 250 nodes, you have to configure each node for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly retention. If you have 1,000 nodes, it is going to take you ages just to configure and register the nodes. You need to configure the schedule and the CAD daemons or services, depending on whether it is a Unix or Windows OS. Unfortunately, it is a very long and drawn-out process. You have to stop and start the services for changes to take effect. This is a very difficult part of TSM in IBM Spectrum Protect. To configure a backup policy, I should be able to select the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly options in one screen and finish it. After that, everything should happen in the background. All the backup products in the market already do that, and they are very simple to manage. This particular part of this solution has really been a major pain area for us, and unfortunately, we could not find a workaround. There is nobody at IBM who can give us a way to configure all this easily through a GUI or even scripts."
"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."
"It would be helpful if the solution included some sort of ransomware protection."
"We need better protection from ransomware or the ability to identify ways we can protect ourselves from ransomware. Having backups is one thing, but specifically, we need methods to recover if we have a ransomware attack."
"No one can fix every solution for backup and restore."
"There were scalability issues only in the brand new features which were recently released."
"There is room for improvement in IBM Spectrum Protect, especially regarding its support for virtual environment backups."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Licensing can be either complicated or simple depending on what type of licensing you wish to use and what works best for your environment."
"The pricing is a little expensive for our current employer, so they want to move to a cheaper solution."
"The solution has a capacity based licensing, front and back-end license."
"IBM Spectrum Protect can be considered an averagely-priced product."
"The solution's pricing is fair. Price-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
"The pricing model of this solution is another difficult area, it's very sophisticated in the way they charge. It's based on PBU, which is a type of processor, how, many processors, and you need to put everything into an equation. However, they have different ways of charging or licensing. One way is a back-end volume or front-end volume, which is quite complicated."
"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 worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business53
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise95
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell Data Protection Suite?
The solution is very expensive, which is its main drawback compared to competition in the market.
What needs improvement with Dell Data Protection Suite?
While Dell DPS is a powerful solution, it is expensive, which allows competitors to find their place in the market. The deployment is complex and not simplified, requiring professional expertise. A...
What is your primary use case for Dell Data Protection Suite?
As a reseller and partner of Dell Technologies, I sell and resell whatever Dell offers in Pakistan. I am involved in storage solutions, including products like Powerwall, Compellent, and PowerStore...
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Storage Protect?
I do not know the current licensing cost for IBM Storage Protect and how we get our support because our licensing model is not quite standard. We do not buy IBM Storage Protect direct from IBM. We ...
What needs improvement with IBM Storage Protect?
IBM Storage Protect is from a previous generation of backup software. In those days, backup software was complex in setting up and complex to manage. The new software, such as Rubrik, is very easy ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM Spectrum Discover
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
CEMEX
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