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Firefly vs IBM Spectrum Computing comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Firefly
Ranking in Cloud Management
37th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Spectrum Computing
Ranking in Cloud Management
28th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Firefly is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Computing is 1.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Spectrum Computing1.2%
Firefly0.3%
Other98.5%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

MR
Senior Software Consultant at a hospitality company with 10,001+ employees
Design workflows have been transformed and now enable rapid ad visuals and campaign launches
Firefly offers several best features in my opinion. We have the TTS feature and TTV feature. Additionally, suppose I have a single image from the creative designer and I want to generate different variations or different sizes of that image that will get adapted mostly on Google Ads. For example, I want to generate different renditions of that same image in different resolutions. I can quickly go to Firefly and from a single image generate different multiple images in different renditions. Firefly also helps us expand images. For example, I have a small image that is a portrait and I want to convert that as a full image or a hero image, which fits on a wide screen. Firefly helps us generate the images. It will not be stretching or squeezing your image. Instead, Firefly takes the context from your image and generates the next object which could appear. For example, if I am standing on a beach, it will generate the beach. It will generate a few people, it will generate some pictures of the sea, maybe some coconut trees. Firefly has positively impacted my organization a lot. I can say it is helping us reduce the effort and cost, saving the cost. For example, I have to create one image for our social media post. For that, we have to request our creative team, and then a creative designer will work on that idea and take one day or two days to get the design complete. After that, it comes to the review. With the help of Firefly, we can quickly generate the images and get them reviewed. Our go-to-market becomes easy. Within two hours or three hours, we can complete this whole process: generation, review, and all, and go to the market instantly. Additionally, if we have one image available and I want to quickly launch a Google Ad campaign that requires different renditions of the image, I can quickly use Firefly and generate different renditions of the image using the single image. So, it also reduces the dependency which we had earlier with the creative designers and the creative team.
OmarIsmail1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Technical Specialist II at Clicks Group
Senior Technical Specialist appreciates intelligent workload management, strong support, and scalability
The best features of IBM Spectrum Computing are common across many of their storage products. The software is solid, meaning that the code is stable. They take business seriously, which is what IBM stands for - International Business Machines. They always maintain a business-oriented approach in their software development. It's not simply clicking through interfaces; in IBM software, they consider their actions, process flows, and workflows around business processes. It requires understanding IBM and their methodology, as the software operates accordingly. I have utilized IBM Spectrum Computing's intelligent workload management feature. We use Insights, which is connected to the cloud. This provides AI capabilities for analyzing the configuration, offering smart recommendations on new code, warning about bugs in current code, and suggesting configuration improvements through its advisor tool. The predictive analytics feature in IBM Spectrum Computing enables optimal software performance through Insights. However, being a storage administrator requires foundational knowledge and understanding beyond these tools. For troubleshooting, it's efficient in spotting bottlenecks, but understanding the terms and metrics is essential as it provides answers that need interpretation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Firefly saves one employee, it saves 5 million annually, and we are currently improving 40% of our go-to-market time while reducing cost by 30% and increasing revenue by approximately 20%."
"Firefly simply acts as a single source of truth for my cloud inventory and governance, and it complements my existing cloud and FinOps processes rather than replacing them."
"The comparison was challenging, but the IBM Spectrum Scale offered a balanced solution. Our engineers rated itsanalytics capabilities equally high as Pure Storage. For workload management, Spectrum Computing provided effective solutions that met our needs. Workload management is part of a complete solution that uses different tools. There were the cloud and HPC parts; within HPC, there were parts like liquid cooling, simple computing, storage, and orchestration. The orchestration team handled the workload management."
"Easy to operate and use."
"I have utilized IBM Spectrum Computing's intelligent workload management feature through Insights, which is connected to the cloud."
"The best features of IBM Spectrum Computing are common across many of their storage products."
"This solution is working for both VTL and tape."
"Spectrum Computing's best features are its speed, robustness, and data processing and analysis."
"The most valuable feature is the backup capability."
"IBM's ability to cluster compute resources is impressive, with built-in support for scenarios like VR and active-active configurations,"
 

Cons

"However, I still see a lot of improvement scope in their service."
"If I talk about the cost, the cost is a little high."
"SMB storage and HPC is not compatible and it should be supported by IBM Spectrum Computing."
"We have not been able to use deduplication."
"IBM's sales and support structure can be challenging."
"We'd like to see some AI model training for machine learning."
"Spectrum Computing is lagging behind other products, most likely because it hasn't been shifted to the cloud."
"The deduplication software isn't quite up to speed with the market. While IBM has excellent compression technology, specifically on their FlashCore modules, they lag behind competitors such as NetApp in deduplication capabilities."
"In Pakistan, IBM's disadvantage is the lack of OEM support and presence."
"Lack of sufficient documentation, particularly in Spanish."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Spectrum Computing is one of the most expensive products on the market."
"This solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Transportation Company
8%
Performing Arts
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Firefly?
At times the image quality from Firefly is inconsistent. That is something that could be improved. There is limited creative visibility that could be worked on. Firefly is already a pretty good too...
What is your primary use case for Firefly?
I have been using Firefly for creator purposes, specifically for creating images, videos, vectors, and design elements. I have been working on a few projects that require documentation, and those p...
What advice do you have for others considering Firefly?
I can tell you about time savings, but the exact metrics are beyond the scope of my work, so I do not have them. Personally speaking, I have been spending less time on creating visuals for presenta...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Computing?
IBM Spectrum Computing consistently offers competitive pricing. When solutioning new implementations, IBM always presents the best solution and price. In a recent comparison with Pure Storage and N...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Computing?
IBM Spectrum Computing had limitations with remote copy services between head office and disaster recovery sites. In the last year, IBM has improved the code by re-engineering it to policy-based re...
What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Computing?
The typical use case for IBM Spectrum Computing is that it's an all-rounder. It can be used in various scenarios, such as the retailer I work for that has batch processing. It's on-demand when perf...
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM Platform Computing
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
London South Bank University, Transvalor, Infiniti Red Bull Racing, Genomic
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