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IBM Spectrum Protect vs Veritas Backup Exec comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

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
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
150
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Veritas Backup Exec
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas Backup Exec is 1.7%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Syed Habib - PeerSpot reviewer
Manageable and comprehensive and integrates robust backup features for core banking
It's adequate for my core banking, however, I am looking for another solution for all systems. It is not compatible with other operating systems like Windows or Linux, and lacks a consolidated dashboard from Browser Spectrum. This is why I am searching for another solution. The product also lacks any centralized graphical user interface (GUI), such as Jarek Pod, and I am limited to using a console-based text user interface, which my local partner handles completely.
Pawel Augustyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplified interface with good performance but needs monitoring
I need to use PowerStore and Veritas Backup Exec. It is a direct backup to types, and it is supported by my backup. It offers good performance and stability, and it works properly. I am happy with this program. It is still working on aligning with security requirements and data encryption for Amazon or ATAC. It has a lot of functions and security measures, which ensure our backups are secure.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In general, the solution is quite user-friendly. The GUI is very nice."
"With data deduplication and compression, we are reducing our overall storage footprint for our disk histories. Therefore, we are reducing the actual cost of the disk for our data protection and data backups."
"The software-defined ability to do data reduction through deduplication and compression, as well as being able to replicate data to a cloud container."
"IBM Spectrum Protect is stable."
"The main feature of this product is a flexible architecture and functionality that allows you to solve problems of any complexity and scale. Most importantly, it is not just a product that simply makes a backup, but it restores and saves a large number of services in critical situations. By the way, it works fine with different types of clouds, supports S3."
"The solution is really scalable."
"From a tech perspective, utilizing deduplication is one of the most valuable features."
"I find the whole product useful. The backup archive client, snapshot, spectrum for virtual environments are beneficial features."
"In the global business world, Veritas has a very good name. I think they have a good solid product, and they are always trying to improve it, and update it. ;They know what the client actually needs, and they are up to the challenge of satisfying those needs."
"Setting up Backup Exec is straightforward. It took less than two weeks to get it up and running. You need maybe two people at most if you have a Veritas-certified engineer."
"Veritas Backup Exec is fully compatible with different tape libraries."
"It is a good backup tool."
"The solution is stable."
"It is responding very well, and its performance is good. It has a lot of options. For backup, you can connect it to a cloud or a physical hard drive. They also provide an API for integration with different platforms and products. However, we have not integrated it with another product."
"Veritas Backup Exec is easily managed."
"The most valuable feature of Veritas Backup Exec is the ease of use."
 

Cons

"We are still using TSM Manager for many of our projects to administer our platform because the gap was not resolved with the new Operations Center."
"Getting technical support all the necessary diagnostic information is still very painful."
"In terms of features, they've got it all covered. The features they have are quite good. The only downside to it is that it is for an enterprise or big organization. In my opinion, it is not for a small business."
"It is not easy to manage like other products in the market. It is okay only if you are command-line driven. Even though the operation center is there, it doesn't provide a single view of everything. You have to, for example, use TSMManager on top of it, which gives you a far better management capability, but it is a third-party product. Its management needs to be improved. There should be an HTML or graphical interface. It is a very difficult product. For example, you have a backup policy where you want a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly policy standard. It is an old kind of system where you have to keep retention for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly backups, which is very difficult in IBM Spectrum Protect. In other products, in a matter of five minutes, you can configure such a policy. In TSM, it takes you one, two, or three days because you need to configure a node for each of them. If you have 250 nodes, you have to configure each node for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly retention. If you have 1,000 nodes, it is going to take you ages just to configure and register the nodes. You need to configure the schedule and the CAD daemons or services, depending on whether it is a Unix or Windows OS. Unfortunately, it is a very long and drawn-out process. You have to stop and start the services for changes to take effect. This is a very difficult part of TSM in IBM Spectrum Protect. To configure a backup policy, I should be able to select the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly options in one screen and finish it. After that, everything should happen in the background. All the backup products in the market already do that, and they are very simple to manage. This particular part of this solution has really been a major pain area for us, and unfortunately, we could not find a workaround. There is nobody at IBM who can give us a way to configure all this easily through a GUI or even scripts."
"Better integration with other tools and databases is needed."
"An area for improvement would be the ease of use - the GUI is not up to the mark compared to other products in the market."
"We should be talking about the capacity of the tape drives. That's the only problem."
"It has a lot of areas for improvement. Its reporting for job completion or incompletion can be improved. It should also provide a granular recovery, ease of operation, data life cycle management, and media management. It should support a backup in such a format that in case of a disaster, one can start the virtual machine out of the backup itself. Its reliability can also be better. It is also expensive, and their support is also poor."
"Whenever a job fails, it would be a great improvement to be able to resume the job from that feature. Suppose a job was started this morning and that it is going on while there are interruptions like network issues, server restart issues, server connectivity issues, services stopping, etc. For some reason, let's assume that the job failed or that it was mistakenly canceled by another person. It will be a great improvement if that failed job can be continued."
"More stable environment in a WAN infrastructure."
"The pricing is an area of improvement and the mode of marketing it."
"I would like to be able to create a restore task that can be scheduled so that the same restore action will be performed automatically."
"Veritas can improve the user interface and the information displayed."
"The EDR should be looked at, as the operating system is too weak."
"The pricing of the solution is a bit high."
"The solution is too heavy and complex with 1,000 menus and options that make it messy rather than lightweight."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the pricing a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is not cost-effective, and ten is cost-effective."
"Technical support is pretty good. It is doing fine, but you pay for it."
"The solution's pricing is fair. Price-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
"We pay for a terabyte license to support our backend usage."
"The pricing is a little expensive for our current employer, so they want to move to a cheaper solution."
"The licensing is varied. If we have small environments (not many TB being managed) it is best to license by PVUs (depending on the number of cores of the machine). If we manage many TBs we look at licensing by capacity which allows us to use all the agents of the product."
"Spectrum Protect is not a cheap option."
"We have found that the pricing is high in our country."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"We are satisfied with the price of this solution."
"It is not an expensive product."
"Regarding expense, Backup Exec is generally suitable for small and medium businesses. However, we can customize them based on the workload."
"I would like to see a better licensing model. They changed it and it's just horrendous."
"Licensing depends on the part of the backup you're using. If you have SQL backup, then you must have a SQL license. If you have normal data backup, you would require a license for that."
"Veritas licensing is somewhat expensive. They have to decrease the price."
"The price is reasonable for the features it offers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?
It's adequate for my core banking, however, I am looking for another solution for all systems. It is not compatible with other operating systems like Windows or Linux, and lacks a consolidated dash...
How do the backup solutions of Veeam and Veritas compare?
Technically, Veeam is best for hyper-v & VMWare replications, snapshots, HA failover, also support for file system backups inside VMs., support for tape library & FC too. But Veritas Netbac...
What do you like most about Veritas Backup Exec?
The most important feature is the variety of backup applications it supports, including ERP systems and most other programs, such as Microsoft.
 

Also Known As

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
Backup Exec, Symantec Backup Exec
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CERN, Einstein Healthcare, Nyherji, Allianz Australia, TZM, ABT Online, NCT, Kindred Healthcare Inc., Cobalt Iron, TransGrid, Baptist Health of Northeast Florida, Cash America, Piedmont Healthcare, RWGV, Arkansas Tech University, British Columbia Institute of Technology
Beta Offshore
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Veritas Backup Exec and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.