IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs Scality RING comparison

IBM and Scality are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. IBM is ranked #24, while Scality is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2. IBM holds a 2.0% mindshare in SDS, compared to Scality’s 3.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Scality users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Scality RING and IBM Spectrum Accelerate are data storage solutions. IBM Spectrum Accelerate generally holds a stronger position due to its extensive features and performance capabilities.

Features: Scality RING offers object storage capabilities, scalability, and high availability, suitable for diverse workloads. It supports various S3 and file protocols. IBM Spectrum Accelerate provides robust performance features, high-speed data processing, and integration within existing infrastructure using IBM's proprietary technology.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Scality RING facilitates quick set-ups with helpful customer service. IBM Spectrum Accelerate's deployment can be complex, requiring experienced integration efforts, but it offers extensive resources and guidance for complex operations.

Pricing and ROI: Scality RING has competitive pricing structures, offering lower upfront setup costs. IBM Spectrum Accelerate, while having higher initial costs, presents a compelling ROI for businesses needing comprehensive features with high-performance architecture.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. Scality RING Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. Scality RING

August 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

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Accelerate is 2.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Scality RING is 3.9%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Scality RING	3.9%
Pure Storage FlashBlade	4.2%
IBM Spectrum Accelerate	2.0%
Other	89.9%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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reviewer1154616

IS Auditor at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

A robust solution with good performance and support

This is a solution that scales well, although I think that we have stabilized in terms of use. With respect to scalability, we have an open question as to whether we will be able to grow into a cloud-based deployment. We don't know in what ways this solution will assist us with the migration, or whether we can still use it for DR. We don't know about the type of backup, be it full, incremental, or otherwise. We are also looking for a cost-savings if we migrate. These are things that we will find out over time. We have about two petabytes of data.

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Sebastien Foucou

Infrastructure architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Leverages seamless data access with efficient storage management

I would improve Scality RING by bundling the Operating System with RING and modernizing the graphical interfaces. As for areas for improvement—if I had to summarize—a technical aspect would be the Operating System part, which today isn't really covered by Scality RING, whereas it is with Artesca. It would be a real advantage for customers to have a bundle that includes both the Operating System and Scality RING, with an install and maintenance model handled by Scality. Secondly, perhaps a more cosmetic point—the graphical interfaces could be modernized a bit. There's been work done on Artesca; maybe it should be extended more to RING. I believe that should come with version 10, so I'm not too concerned. I find RING's cyber resilience against ransomware threats somewhat complicated to assess. The product itself offers sufficient protection, and the features provided via S3 allow you to protect against this kind of attack—provided you implement these features, such as object lock with retention and everything that goes with it. If I had to identify an area for improvement, it would be the OS part—but that doesn't necessarily concern RING, unlike Artesca, which comes bundled with an OS. There's been real work done by the Scality teams to secure the system layer in Artesca. It didn't influence us. We know the product and what needs to be implemented to protect data, and it's part of the best practices we also pass on to our clients.

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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

"It is very easy to use, and it is very fast."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

"The solution provides many controllers."

"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."

"The initial setup is pretty quick."

"The initial setup was straightforward. If you know how to plug in power and network you're pretty much qualified. They were on site to configure the network, the box to fit into our network architecture. Other than that, we self-managed from there."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power outages when we need to quickly move data between different data centers. It ensures efficient replication and helps maintain our data centers' uptime."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is performance."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"The ease of use is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's very user-friendly."

"The most valuable feature is the robustness, which is typical of IBM because their software generally just works."

"I would give customer service and technical support a 10 on a scale from 1 to 10 based solely on my own experience."

"I would rate Scality RING 10 out of 10."

"Scality RING is very robust."

"I think it's the economic factor. This solution has the lowest cost for storage systems."

"Scality RING's capacity and performance scaling across sites and clouds have positively affected our operational efficiency."

"The best features of Scality RING include multiple aspects, but a few that we specifically appreciate are the scalability platform, which allows us to scale our growth; second is metadata indexing and S3 API capabilities that allow us to access the data from one source."

"The best features of Scality RING are its object storage solution, scalability, and durability."

"Scality RING has influenced our approach to scaling in different dimensions by providing a cost-effective solution for the tremendous amount of data we generate every day for each customer. It allows us to store, sort, and analyze data effectively while meeting our performance thresholds."

More Scality RING pros

Cons

"It usually comes down to just what you hit and the value you're getting when you spend the money and license the products. I would always go, "If you want to make things better, lower your price and make your licensing simpler." There's always an opportunity around that."

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

"In terms of technical support, the experience has been mixed. The support is done through email and is not that great, making it a very problematic area I've been dealing with for over four years."

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."

"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."

"We initially encountered challenges with the assembly process due to issues with the documentation required during setup, an area where Pure Storage needs improvement."

"The speed could be improved."

"I would like to have Snapshots and Snapmail in the next release. People who came from a NetApp background, especially expect these features."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

"he interface is not user-friendly so the ease of use could be improved."

"The reporting mechanisms need improvement."

"Scality RING has contributed to overall company costs in that it has not reduced costs but rather increased them because we are now using this product as an additional protection mechanism for the backup."

"When we used this solution in 2015, it was not scalable at all. I don't know if they have improved on that, but at the time, scalability was just horrible."

"Scality RING is not easy to learn for someone new. It is a little bit difficult. There are a lot of components to it, and you also need to understand them to work with it effectively."

"While Scality claims to be 100% compatible with Amazon S3, it seems this isn't entirely true; there are instances where specific backup tools require S3 to create checksums over written backups, which Scality does not support, unlike Amazon S3."

"What we are currently missing and will be demanding in the new tender is an additional external backup of all data, ideally on a simple system, to safeguard against any severe local incidents so that we still have the data protected elsewhere."

"We do see some areas where we have much higher operations or much higher queries, Scality sometimes chokes up."

"I would like to see more possibilities in the UI for managing aspects of the RING as indicated in the roadmap for the next version of their product. Apart from the UI improvements, I would like to see more features implemented with S3 since not all features are implemented in Scality RING, particularly features such as the S3 select in AWS and the possibility to manage all RINGs with one portal."

"I typically have at least three different views with three user interfaces open when I work on something. I find it quite complicated at times."

More Scality RING cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate."

"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."

"The pricing is relatively expensive due to the FlashBlade technology. However, for companies needing quick and reliable data access, the cost is justified."

"Our customers have seen a reduction in TCO."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

"The price could be cheaper."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"For a database, on a yearly basis, we pay approximately $3,500 for licensing fees. The solution is sold as a subscription on a yearly basis so there are no other ancillary costs."

"If you are cost-sensitive then this solution is not for you."

"The cost of Scality RING8 could be less expensive. It is difficult for smaller businesses to afford it."

"The initial cost (CAPEX) to set up the infrastructure is expensive due to the specific hardware required."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

No data available

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	20

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	12

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing of Pure Storage FlashBlade is expensive compared to other products I used from other companies in the pas...

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What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

I believe there is not much improvement needed because they have everything we need, but the interface is a little bi...

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Earn 20 points

What do you like most about Scality RING8?

Another feature I like is the life cycle management that helps me with data storage efficiency.

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What needs improvement with Scality RING8?

There are areas that may have room for improvement, and the Scality team is aware of it. You can obtain information d...

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What is your primary use case for Scality RING8?

Scality RING serves multiple use cases for storage, for GenAI and analytics, unstructured and structured data, backup...

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Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

Supermicro SuperBlade vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 2% of the time

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StorMagic SvSAN vs IBM Spectrum Accelerate

Compared 43% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Accelerate

Compared 32% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Accelerate

Compared 25% of the time

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MinIO vs Scality RING

Compared 15% of the time

Cloudian HyperStore vs Scality RING

Compared 14% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Scality RING

Compared 13% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Scality RING

Compared 13% of the time

VAST Data vs Scality RING

Compared 3% of the time

More Scality RING Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

August 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

September 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Accelerate product report

Buyer's Guide

Scality RING

August 2025

Download Scality RING product report

Also Known As

No data available

IBM XIV

Scality RING, RING8

Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

IBM Spectrum Accelerate is a software-defined block storage solution designed for rapid deployment across heterogeneous infrastructure for hybrid cloud and delivering consistent service levels to a dynamic workload mix. It is based on proven grid-architecture, enterprise-scale IBM XIV technology. IBM Spectrum Accelerate can be deployed, including as hyper-converged infrastructure, on any x86 server, on pre-installed third-party appliances or on public cloud infrastructure, and is available as a service on IBM Cloud infrastructure.

IBM

Scality RING is the scalable and resilient object storage solution designed for modern workloads, providing seamless data protection against evolving cyber threats.

Scality RING leverages S3 object storage to meet unpredictable demands with a patented MultiScale Architecture that offers limitless scalability across capacity, performance, and more. It delivers end-to-end cyber resilience with CORE5 for ransomware protection, while its cloud-style economics and intuitive management empower enterprises to accelerate AI initiatives and optimize cloud deployments. Its flexibility is ideal for service providers managing extensive data needs.

What are the key features of Scality RING?

S3 and CDMI Support: Ensures compatibility for application needs.
Erasure Coding: Provides cost-efficient, durable storage.
Unified Tiered Infrastructure: Aids billing per IOPS.
Lifecycle Management: Optimizes storage utilization.
Unlimited Scalability: Ideal for large enterprise demands.
Data/Metadata Ring Deployment: Ensures robust performance and tailored SLAs.

What benefits or ROI should users expect?

Economic Value: Offers cost-effective storage solutions.
Effective Support: Enhances collaboration through responsive assistance.
Improved Flexibility: Adaptable deployment models for complex needs.

Scality RING is extensively implemented in backup solutions across industries, supporting platforms like Veeam and CommVault. It aids in storage expansion and management of large data volumes alongside multi-site architectures. While not leading in AI spaces due to performance constraints, there's potential with faster disk support. It's also used in archives, binary lakes, multimedia services, and AI data lakes.

Scality

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

Silverpop

Comcast, TimeWarner Cable, EuroSport, Orange, Deluxe, DailtMotion, SFR, RTL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Telstra

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. Scality RING

August 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. Scality RING

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Accelerate vs. Scality RING and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.

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