IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs NetApp SnapCenter comparison

IBM and NetApp are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. IBM is ranked #46 with an average rating of 7.3, while NetApp is ranked #48 with an average rating of 7.5. IBM holds a 0.9% mindshare in BRS, compared to NetApp’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

Read 31 IBM Spectrum Protect Plus reviews

1,482 Views
1,438 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

NetApp SnapCenter

Read 27 NetApp SnapCenter reviews

1,188 Views
1,105 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

NetApp SnapCenter

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus and NetApp SnapCenter are both data protection and recovery solutions. NetApp SnapCenter appears to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set.

Features: Users value IBM Spectrum Protect Plus for scalability, ease of integration, and reliable backup capabilities. NetApp SnapCenter stands out with powerful snapshot and replication features and efficient application-aware backups.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Protect Plus needs enhancements in reporting, analytics, and compatibility. NetApp SnapCenter requires better compatibility with certain environments and a more intuitive performance monitoring system.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is praised for straightforward deployment and excellent customer service. NetApp SnapCenter has a relatively easy deployment process but mixed reactions about support.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is more budget-friendly and offers good ROI due to lower initial setup costs. NetApp SnapCenter, though more expensive, is seen as worth the investment for its advanced features and robust capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs. NetApp SnapCenter Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs. NetApp SnapCenter

July 2025

Download the complete report

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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 Protect Plus

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

46th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NetApp SnapCenter

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

48th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is 0.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp SnapCenter is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

Atif Najam

Chief Information Officer and Program Lead at Gatron Industries Ltd

Enables organizations to make large-scale recoveries easily, but the security must be improved

The security must be improved. We face a lot of cyber threats like ransomware. It impacts data availability and protection. The tool must provide a mechanism to make resilient backups. The tool must ensure that the recent backups have no ransomware. The backup must be immutable. They must be cyber-resilient backups. Finding a good resource person for IBM Spectrum in Pakistan is difficult. We have to rely on the support team. Resource availability is a challenge.

Read full review

Mir Gulzar Ahmed

IT Manager at Synergy Computers

Integrates well with various applications , provides a cloning feature for creating snapshots or clones of volume and a centralized command

It is basically centralized command control software. When the users visualize the workflow of the backup, the management and the customer storage administrator know the ins and outs of the backup and recovery. They can make the strategy for their backup and recovery and the certainty of their backups and restore. Strategic planning: Also, it is easy to make a strategy when you have visualized the inflow and outflow of the backup and recovery. With the CLI or native way, without any UI or management tool, you might not be able to create any strategy at all. This is especially important when you have multiple storage systems inside your data center or organization. You need a tool that connects and visualizes the workflow of the backup and recovery from all the storage systems and NetApp storage systems installed within the organization. It is very important when you have multiple storage systems, and you need to manage your backup and recovery workflow. Ease of Management: Unlike other storage vendors, NetApp has its own product called SnapCenter. Other vendors need to acquire third-party software or integrate with other software to manage storage systems. NetApp has its own solution, which is SnapCenter. NetApp's SnapCenter gels well with their storage systems and products. Ease of management is already there. It's a fine software with easy installation, management, and understanding. It's not a complicated software to understand.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is scalable and can be fitted for any customer."

"The solution is scalable."

"Virtual snapshots that offer incremental backups."

"The API is very good."

"The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that the product works and helps with restoration areas whenever there is a need to restore something."

"The tool has enough documentation; you don't need to contact the support team."

"Some of the features we find very valuable and use a lot, are retention sets."

"The initial setup of IBM Protect Plus is simple and not complex."

More IBM Spectrum Protect Plus pros

"The backup features are the most valuable because they allow the DBAs to replace SnapManager for Oracle (SMO), which is going away, and to do cloning as well. We can also clone to different servers and have the actual backup clone mounted on different servers. And we can split easily too."

"Technical support has been very helpful when we have issues."

"It's integrated with VMware vCenter. You can also see the backups there and you can do a restore completely out of vCenter."

"The backup process finishes very quickly."

"It's a centralized, easy-to-use solution empowering RBAC management, monitoring, notifications, extensive logging, and backup schedules for standalone as well as groups of the same types of environments. The cloning capabilities accelerate development."

"It's very helpful because SnapCenter is already integrated with VMware Snapshot, so it's very easy to use."

"The support from NetApp is very good, and I would rate it as ten points."

"Being able to add everything in as resource groups is a valuable feature... Having all the SQL servers put into specific buckets, based on their year of release - 2008, 2012, 2014 - allows us to get almost immediate backups that are easily seen and reported on."

More NetApp SnapCenter pros

Cons

"I would like more integration with security. We need to show the value of the product in regards to handling security. For example, how it handles current malware or viruses. IBM should be more proactive in this direction."

"The security must be improved."

"The replication feature is not available."

"The Gui interface and usability are not so friendly and easy."

"The backup support for IBM Power Virtualization needs to be added."

"I think the graphical reports are a shortcoming of the tool since it fails to provide my company with what we want in terms of reporting. Due to the product's inability to take care of its reporting part, we have to use third-party software."

"The solution should allow for backup of iOS snapshots."

"Instead of using the command prompt for troubleshooting and administering the backup, there should be an easy-to-use graphical user interface."

More IBM Spectrum Protect Plus cons

"Since the solution's initial setup is complex, it should make training documents available in the public space."

"We have hundreds of servers and systems and hundreds of customers and they're separated in a multi-tenancy way in NetApp SVM. Right now, the problem is that it always scan all SVMs. If I backup Customer A, it scans all SVMs, or tries to scan all SVMs, if there is a backup relationship on the storage. But it doesn't have the permissions, so we run into timeouts or the backup just takes too long. They're fixing that in the upcoming release..."

"The documentation could be a little bit better so that we could handle more of the troubleshooting ourselves, rather than having to go through support."

"One thing that might be improved is the ease of management."

"The GUI is still so-so. I' don't use the GUI that often anymore because it's really slow, refreshing disks, refreshing hosts, and you have to click a lot."

"The replication feature needs improvement in future releases."

"The Dashboard view needs to be more compressed with better ease of access and drill-down features. They should also reinstate Linux filesystem backups of storage volumes (which existed in the prior version)."

"Groups might be helpful for each site or data center so that we know a given data center has these resources while another data center has those resources. It's not always easy to group hosts by type."

More NetApp SnapCenter cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the price of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus a one on a scale of one to ten, where one is extremely expensive, and ten is very cheap."

"If you need to extend it, it can be extended acting like a normal Spectrum Protect with a long archive."

"The price is perpetual, but the maintenance cost is annual. That is, we pay once for the product and pay annually for the maintenance and support. The price was much cheaper than what we would have had to pay for EMC or Veritas. The pricing is competitive, and I would rate it at four out of five."

"Depends on the licensing options that you choose."

"There are a few options available for purchasing the solutions. Overall, the price of the is high."

"Unlike some other solutions, such as Veritas NetBackup where you have to pay for different licenses to use different features, there is a single license that allows you to use all of the features."

"IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is a little expensive."

"The solution is too expensive."

More IBM Spectrum Protect Plus pricing and cost advice

"The license for SnapCenter was included with the storage array."

"We see a financial value with SnapCenter because we don't have to license Commvault, which is pretty expensive."

"The licensing is well-designed because it's already included in some packages with NetApp storage. Therefore, for most customers, it's okay as the SnapCenter license is already included in some NetApp bundles."

"It comes free with the amount of equipment we purchase from NetApp. In terms of pricing, zero is my favorite number."

"We have a site license, so it comes with the product."

"It's free. The license is included with other NetApp products."

"The product is inexpensive."

"Pricing is very good because if you already have NepApp controllers, then it's included."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

19%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?

The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that the product works and helps with restoration areas whenever there is a need to restore something.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?

It is probably based on the number of CPUs. They are fairly expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?

I used IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, but IBM is now replacing it with IBM Data Protect, which is a giant product now in common development with a well-known company in backup solutions.

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp SnapCenter?

Most banks and financial institutions use the solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp SnapCenter?

The product should be free because it is just software to administrate systems purchased from NetApp, which are already expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp SnapCenter?

The interface usability needs improvement. It should be more user-friendly and easier for customers to use.

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM Storage Protect vs IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

Compared 50% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

Compared 14% of the time

Rubrik vs IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

Compared 10% of the time

Atempo Live Navigator vs IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

Compared 8% of the time

HPE Zerto Software vs IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Competitors

Synology DSM vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 24% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 17% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 12% of the time

Veritas NetBackup vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 10% of the time

Rubrik vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 10% of the time

More NetApp SnapCenter Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

August 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Protect Plus product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp SnapCenter

August 2025

Download NetApp SnapCenter product report

Also Known As

No data available

SnapCenter

Overview

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is a data protection and availability solution for virtual environments that can be deployed in minutes and protect your environment within an hour. It simplifies data protection, whether data is hosted in physical, virtual, software-defined or cloud environments. It can be implemented as a stand-alone solution or integrate with your IBM Spectrum Protect environment to off-load copies for long term storage and data governance with scale and efficiency.

IBM

Unified, scalable platform for application-consistent data protection and clone management. This software simplifies backup, restore, and clone lifecycle management with application-integrated workflows.

NetApp

Sample Customers

PT Wings Surya, Tectrade, State of Ohio

All for One Steeb AG, Accenture

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs. NetApp SnapCenter

July 2025

Free Report: IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs. NetApp SnapCenter

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs. NetApp SnapCenter and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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