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IBM Storage Protect vs IBM Tivoli CDP for Files comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2025

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 Storage Protect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Tivoli CDP for Files
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
76th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
1
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 Storage Protect is 2.3%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Tivoli CDP for Files is 0.2%, up from 0.2% 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.
reviewer1035033 - PeerSpot reviewer
Restoration and infrastructure are extremely reliable
We are currently using Tivoli to backup 15 terabytes within our Oracle Database using a RMAN backup script. The RMAN's utility and restoration has been perfect, we have yet to experience any issues. It's very reliable The restoration and infrastructure are extremely reliable. We would like to…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It helps our customers protect their data, keep it long-term, and feel pretty secure about it, basically sleeping well at night."
"The solution is really scalable."
"Scalability is pretty much unlimited."
"Since the technology is reliable, it simplifies the backup process significantly. Now, our focus can primarily be on managing full backups and creating some offline copies."
"We have better, faster backup times, and it has improved efficiency in the backups."
"We like IBM Spectrum's versioning capabilities. It lets us specify how many versions of a file we want to keep and for how long. Also, the archive component of the software helps us a lot."
"It integrates well with Spectrum Scale."
"We have a very good team of administrators who know the product perfectly and are able to manage it on a day-to-day basis."
"The restoration and infrastructure is extremely reliable."
 

Cons

"The stability could be improved."
"There have been some sizing issues now, and we are dealing with those."
"There needs to be a bit more automation."
"We have run into some periods where we have found some tape issues which were causing us problems, but we resolved them. For some reason, we had a bunch of drives go offline on our disk storage (our virtual library)."
"They should have a proper technical support team serving the customers and get issues resolved earlier."
"The main admin console from the UI cannot do anything in the product. It just allows us to maintain, maybe, 30% to 40%. For the rest, we have to use the command line."
"It needs some software upgrades to fix some of its current bugs."
"They can include more cloud-enriching features. I would like IBM Spectrum Protect to have the functionality for backing up a VM directly in Azure. I would like to be able to back up a VM directly in Azure without spinning up a Hyper-V cluster and backing up the virtual server."
"We would like to have the opportunity to omit data from being backed up. For example, we have three virtual machines, each with three disks. When running the backup, it will automatically take each disk rather than allowing us to select what data we want backed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM Spectrum Protect, cost-wise, has way higher pricing than Veeam. By switching over to Veeam, my company saved over $600,000 in USD. The IBM Spectrum Protect pricing is a two on a scale of one to ten. My company paid additional fees for maintenance, apart from the standard licensing fees."
"The pricing is a little expensive for our current employer, so they want to move to a cheaper solution."
"IBM provides an open license policy, which is more like a gentlemen's agreement."
"The licensing fees are between $8,000 and $10,000 per year."
"That's a hard estimate. It depends on the licensing, the hardware, and other stuff, but it is fairly expensive. It is generally more expensive than other solutions."
"Licensing IBM Spectrum Protect can be somewhat confusing for new users due to the options available, such as licensing on a capacity or per server basis."
"We have capacity licensing. We use the front end. The capacity licensing is pretty okay on the licensing price. I used to use the old PVU-based licensing in the early environment, but now we use capacity-based licensing."
"We have spec'd out our build, and the cost of it can work quite easily today for our future needs."
"It's expensive, but it's worth for it due to the volume of critical information within our database. We are currently paying about $22,000 per year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Storage Protect?
The best point about IBM Storage Protect is that it can use IBM tape environments, which we still use and will continue to use in the future.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Storage Protect?
IBM Storage Protect is generally an expensive tool. However, with good contracts with IBM or its partners, the cost might not be so high. New customers can expect very high prices.
What needs improvement with IBM Storage Protect?
One point for improvement for IBM Spectrum Protect is security, as IBM has not been investing as much as in the past. There is a need for additional layers of security to fill the gaps, which is wh...
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Also Known As

IBM Spectrum Discover
Tivoli CDP for Files
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CEMEX
Cyberian Data Protection
Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Commvault and others in Backup and Recovery. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.