IBM Spectrum Control vs NetApp OnCommand Insight comparison

IBM and NetApp are both solutions in the Storage Management category. IBM is ranked #5 with an average rating of 6.0, while NetApp is ranked #8. IBM holds a 9.5% mindshare in SM, compared to NetApp’s 5.9% 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

399 Views
173 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

NetApp OnCommand Insight

Read 37 NetApp OnCommand Insight reviews

328 Views
149 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Control

NetApp OnCommand Insight

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.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Control vs. NetApp OnCommand Insight Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Control vs. NetApp OnCommand Insight

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

IBM Spectrum Control

Ranking in Storage Management

5th

Average Rating

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NetApp OnCommand Insight

Ranking in Storage Management

8th

Average Rating

8.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Storage Management category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Control is 9.5%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp OnCommand Insight is 5.9%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Storage Management

Featured Reviews

Aamir Jameel

Senior Systems Manager at Tapal tea

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

Technical Team Lead at Kyndryl

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 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 product keeps historical data for a very long time."

"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 benefits would be mostly the ability to diagnose a problem."

"Spectrum Control's scalability is fine - we can extend it for the backup requirement."

"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."

"Spectrum Control is highly secure and competitively priced."

"Technical support is quite responsive and helpful."

More IBM Spectrum Control pros

"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."

"I am very happy with the stability. When your customers don't notice anything wrong, that's the biggest win for a product."

"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 gives visibility to the VMs."

"This gives me better performance numbers and gives me more information about where my loopholes are, where I need to target my customers, where I need to go back and retain storage."

"Performance monitoring of hundreds of switches and being able to see results in one dashboard."

"OnCommand Insight's most valuable feature is the ability to see figure applications."

"It has helped us optimize our storage."

More NetApp OnCommand Insight pros

Cons

"I would like to see is more information regarding the copy groups (the replication)."

"The solution must support multi-vendor storage."

"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."

"Spectrum Control could be more user-friendly."

"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."

"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."

"If we were to add VM level performance being able to monitor VMs on a VM level, then that would be good."

"Just make it one product, not in pieces like performance and discovery. Stop having all these individual pieces."

"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?""

"The initial setup is complex. There is a lot of stuff to set up. I had to teach my guys a lot of things, so there was a lot of learning."

"Enhance SNMP monitoring in order to broaden the number of storages that can be discovered."

"I would like to see better graphics. We have seen regular graphs and pie graphs. I am sure that there are better ways to show this information."

"The UI: They have been growing and changing. There's been some growing pains with that, but they are moving into the new HTML5 interface, which is fantastic."

"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

"We were already licensing Spectrum Control. This was one reasons why we went to Control rather than using the other product."

"The solution is reasonably priced."

"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 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."

"The company has saved money by narrowing down issues faster using servers and performance."

"We like that it is one license and everything is bundled in together."

"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."

"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 for NetApp OnCommand Insight could be cheaper. On a scale of one to five, I would rate its price a four."

"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

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

14%

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.

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Comparisons

IBM Storage Insights vs IBM Spectrum Control

Compared 59% of the time

Dell Storage Resource Manager vs IBM Spectrum Control

Compared 21% of the time

CA 1 Tape Management vs IBM Spectrum Control

Compared 20% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Control Competitors

NetApp OnCommand vs NetApp OnCommand Insight

Compared 56% of the time

Dell Storage Resource Manager vs NetApp OnCommand Insight

Compared 44% of the time

More NetApp OnCommand Insight Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Control

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Control product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp OnCommand Insight

June 2025

Download 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

June 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Control vs. NetApp OnCommand Insight

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Control vs. NetApp OnCommand Insight and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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