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IBM Spectrum Control vs NetApp OnCommand Insight comparison

IBM and NetApp are both solutions in the Storage Management category. IBM is ranked #4 with an average rating of 6.0, while NetApp is ranked #8. IBM holds a 9.1% mindshare in SM, compared to NetApp’s 6.0% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of NetApp users who would recommend it.
IBM Spectrum Control
Read 8 IBM Spectrum Control reviews
  • 381 Views
  • 381 Comparison Views
87% willing to recommend
NetApp OnCommand Insight
Read 37 NetApp OnCommand Insight reviews
  • 344 Views
  • 341 Comparison Views
92% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary
We performed a comparison between IBM Spectrum Control and NetApp OnCommand Insight based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Storage Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

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To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Control vs. NetApp OnCommand Insight Report (Updated: July 2025).
Buyer's Guide
IBM Spectrum Control vs. NetApp OnCommand Insight
July 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

IBM Spectrum Control
Ranking in Storage Management
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp OnCommand Insight
Ranking in Storage Management
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Storage Management category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Control is 9.1%, up from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp OnCommand Insight is 6.0%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Storage Management
 

Featured Reviews

Aamir Jameel - PeerSpot reviewer
Scalable but not user-friendly
Spectrum Control could be more user-friendly. IBM also needs to provide proper training to handle Spectrum Control because it's a complicated solution I've been using Spectrum Control for almost three years. Spectrum Control's stability is fine.  Spectrum Control's scalability is fine - we can…
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Anuj_Jain - PeerSpot reviewer
Gives an end-to-end view of your environment and has a very good interface for report creation and customization
NetApp OnCommand Insight is a pretty good tool, and the only concern I have with it is the price. Its price is quite high and could be improved because the licensing feature of this particular tool is on a per GB basis instead of the price being for the complete tool itself. The more you discover, the more you need to pay, and this makes NetApp OnCommand Insight more costly when compared to other tools which are available in the market. My company doesn't have a cloud environment, so all storage is on-premises. I'm not aware of the integration of NetApp OnCommand Insight with the cloud environment, but the tool fits all the marks in terms of what I require and need. It checks all columns for me, so at the moment, nothing comes to mind in terms of additional features I'd like to see from the tool in the future.
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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

"The product keeps historical data for a very long time."
"The benefits would be mostly the ability to diagnose a problem."
"Spectrum Control is highly secure and competitively priced."
"Spectrum Control's scalability is fine - we can extend it for the backup requirement."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use. The ability to get into a storage device and look at whatever you are trying to look at as far as performance, then obtain the reports that you need to do your analytical work."
"The granularity of this solution has been most useful. Customers can click on a single item and get the information only for the single item they choose."
"In my opinion, it's the best monitoring and report creation tool for IBM storage devices. You can do a lot of performance stats and reports with very nice tools for IBM storage devices."
"The installation was very easy. You just install an agent on a server, and you give that agent access to your storage device, then it just collects the data. It took five minutes to set up."
More IBM Spectrum Control pros
"We haven't gone to the extent where we are using the anomaly detection, but from a reporting perspective and single-pane-of-glass perspective, to look at our heterogeneous infrastructure, it is doing a great job."
"The most valuable feature is definitely the reports, the complete analysis of the data. We also like the scalability, since it can work with Hitachi, Isilon, etc."
"Scalability: If you're from a large enterprise, it's easy for us to go into customer environments and pull the data out. It's very security-friendly."
"It has helped us optimize our storage."
"I am very happy with the stability. When your customers don't notice anything wrong, that's the biggest win for a product."
"What I found most valuable in NetApp OnCommand Insight is that it gives me a complete view of the environment, particularly an end-to-end view. I can locate my searches and view my storage devices. I can also find my recent servers and other host devices. I can then map all those into a single view, so that I can learn about the performance of my devices, or if there's a bottleneck at a particular place. I like that I can view all those information in NetApp OnCommand Insight. I like that very much. I also like that NetApp OnCommand Insight has a very good interface that allows you to create and customize reports, and it also offers a bundle of reports as well."
"The Performance Manager: Where we get performance statistics."
"The machine learning features help me troubleshoot faster."
More NetApp OnCommand Insight pros
 

Cons

"Spectrum Control could be more user-friendly."
"The solution must support multi-vendor storage."
"The pain points were, and may still continue to be, the fact that there are multiple components of the product which are installed, you might say, somewhat individually."
"If we were to add VM level performance being able to monitor VMs on a VM level, then that would be good."
"The database could be improved so that the complexity of installation could be easier. We would also like to have more granularity in the profiles and products for users. We would like to link the users to the tool to managers or auditors."
"I would like to see is more information regarding the copy groups (the replication)."
"The initial setup for IBM Spectrum Control is a bit complicated. They should also make it easier to integrate and use the Cosmos Analytics tool, which is very complicated."
"Just make it one product, not in pieces like performance and discovery. Stop having all these individual pieces."
"OnCommand Insight lacks AI to protect against ransomware and identify users accessing things abnormally."
"It's the interop matrix. And if there was a chance to orchestrate on a heterogeneous structure using OCI, that would be a great start; or at least a plugin to each one of them, that would be a great start too."
"NetApp OnCommand Insight is a pretty good tool, and the only concern I have with it is the price. Its price is quite high and could be improved because the licensing feature of this particular tool is on a per GB basis instead of the price being for the complete tool itself. The more you discover, the more you need to pay, and this makes NetApp OnCommand Insight more costly when compared to other tools which are available in the market."
"From 7-Mode to C mode a migration happened and many features, like FTP and SFTP, were dropped. We have been using it, but there needs to be better communication when features are dropped because there are end users using it who might find it a shock: "Oh, why was that dropped?""
"I'd like it to be more stable, simpler, and get Java out of it."
"I would like them to develop voice commands so that I can say to the product, "Create a volume.""
"You can build those out, but initially when you bring up the dashboard, that was one thing they couldn't take away. They couldn't change that. It just looks kind of kludgy. I'd like it to look a lot more clean when I first login."
More NetApp OnCommand Insight cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is reasonably priced."
"We were already licensing Spectrum Control. This was one reasons why we went to Control rather than using the other product."
"It is pay for the amount of storage that you are monitoring. The more that we use the tool and like the tool, we may want to extend it to other storage platforms. This is just a matter of cost."
"The company has saved money by narrowing down issues faster using servers and performance."
"Pricing for NetApp OnCommand Insight could be cheaper. On a scale of one to five, I would rate its price a four."
"We just made a major investment back in May of this year, so we'll have it for another four and a half or five years easily. Thus, we have a five year bumper to bumper agreement."
"Pricing by terabytes, not the end of the world, and that's okay. Stop if I want this, I have to buy that. Just release it as a single product."
"The cost: It is expensive as a solution. You need to be an expert to get anything out of it and we don't have that kind of expertise."
"We like that it is one license and everything is bundled in together."
"For me, it is always too much. Licensing is on TBs, and I think, nowadays that is outmoded."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Control?
The product keeps historical data for a very long time.
See all answers
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Control?
The solution must support multi-vendor storage.
See all answers
What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Control?
The solution can be used for monitoring storage.
See all answers
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Comparisons

IBM Storage Insights vs IBM Spectrum Control Logo
IBM Storage Insights vs IBM Spectrum Control
Compared 74% of the time
Dell Storage Resource Manager vs IBM Spectrum Control Logo
Dell Storage Resource Manager vs IBM Spectrum Control
Compared 26% of the time
More IBM Spectrum Control Competitors
Dell Storage Resource Manager vs NetApp OnCommand Insight Logo
Dell Storage Resource Manager vs NetApp OnCommand Insight
Compared 53% of the time
NetApp OnCommand vs NetApp OnCommand Insight Logo
NetApp OnCommand vs NetApp OnCommand Insight
Compared 47% of the time
More NetApp OnCommand Insight Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
IBM Spectrum Control
July 2025
IBM Spectrum Control reportDownload IBM Spectrum Control product report
Buyer's Guide
NetApp OnCommand Insight
June 2025
NetApp OnCommand Insight reportDownload NetApp OnCommand Insight product report
 

Also Known As

Spectrum Control
OCI
 

Overview

IBM Spectrum Control is a comprehensive solution that can significantly improve monitoring, automation and analytics capabilities in multi-vendor storage environments. IBM Spectrum Control helps manage storage systems, software-defined storage, storage-area network (SAN) fabrics and devices. Storage can be seen from multiple perspectives, including departmental, application and server views. IBM Spectrum Control helps simplify provisioning, tier optimization, performance management and data replication processes.

IBM

NetApp OnCommand Insight management software delivers consistent insight across your data center so you can monitor and manage your hybrid IT multivendor storage, compute, and switching infrastructures.

NetApp
 

Sample Customers

Nuance
Société Générale, TechnologyOne
Buyer's Guide
IBM Spectrum Control vs. NetApp OnCommand Insight
July 2025
Free Report: IBM Spectrum Control vs. NetApp OnCommand Insight
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