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 #5. IBM holds a 5.8% mindshare in SM, compared to NetApp’s 6.1% 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

393 Views
381 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

NetApp OnCommand Insight

Read 37 NetApp OnCommand Insight reviews

466 Views
457 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: November 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Control vs. NetApp OnCommand Insight

November 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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NetApp OnCommand Insight

Ranking in Storage Management

5th

Average Rating

8.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Storage Management category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Control is 5.8%, down from 7.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp OnCommand Insight is 6.1%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Storage Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
NetApp OnCommand Insight	6.1%
IBM Spectrum Control	5.8%
Other	88.1%

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."

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

"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 product keeps historical data for a very long time."

"Technical support is quite responsive and helpful."

"Spectrum Control is highly secure and competitively priced."

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

More IBM Spectrum Control pros

"Being able to immediately look at my data. See the sizing, where I'm at on different virtual machines."

"The machine learning features help me troubleshoot faster."

"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."

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

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the security. When we identify a vulnerability, it is easy to mitigate it. NetApp provides the solution. It's also easy to create and move volumes."

"Once we gathered and saw what we were doing with everything, we saved close to a petabyte worth of data by being able to delete old data and move stuff around. Thus, we became more efficient."

More NetApp OnCommand Insight pros

Cons

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

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

"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 solution must support multi-vendor storage."

"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."

"OnCommand Insight lacks AI to protect against ransomware and identify users accessing things abnormally."

"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."

"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."

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

"When we first went to Cluster Mode, we had a lot of problems. Setup took a few months. We had people onsite, including one of the top guys from NetApp for a while. Going from 7-Mode to Cluster Mode was rough."

"A little bit more from technical support would give us a little bit more insight."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	31

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

Compared 72% of the time

Dell Storage Resource Manager (SRM) vs IBM Spectrum Control

Compared 28% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Control Competitors

Dell Storage Resource Manager (SRM) vs NetApp OnCommand Insight

Compared 59% of the time

Lenovo TS Series vs NetApp OnCommand Insight

Compared 41% of the time

More NetApp OnCommand Insight Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Control

October 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Control product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp OnCommand Insight

October 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

November 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: November 2025.

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