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IBM Storage Protect vs N2W 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
N2W
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
41st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (33rd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (24th), AWS Marketplace (36th)
 

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 N2W is 0.3%, up from 0.1% 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.
Hitesh Jethwa - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly, easy to deploy, and stable
I give the solution a nine out of ten. We require one engineer for maintenance. I would highly recommend N2WS Backup & Recovery, as I have had no issues and the sales and technical support teams have been excellent. They keep in touch with us every three to six months via email and phone calls.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The backup is very good. In other backup systems, you need a lot of storage to gain the same backup policy."
"One of the features which is most interesting in Spectrum Protect is the ability to scale out to great environments. This is something that not many vendors have on the market."
"The platform’s most valuable feature is its ability to verify the recoverability of backups."
"Every time we go and try to get a file, we can get it. Restores are quick and the data is always there."
"Traditional archiving. One of our revenue streams involves maintaining archives of our customers' data for very long periods of time."
"High availability (HA): It is one of the best features."
"It scales well for the amount of clients that we use with it."
"The most valuable features are the stability and also how it's seamlessly integrated with other IBM offerings."
"The backup and restore functionality is very easy to use and manage."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"N2WS Backup & Recovery is very easy to use and configure backup for AWS instances."
"Provides easy, one-click functionality and flexible backup policies and schedules for AWS workloads."
"The recovery time is fantastic and proven. Also, by providing a simple interface, the solution lowers the cost."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The backup and recovery are the most valuable features. So, our developers can work with confidence."
"The product is successful with the SMB market."
 

Cons

"I am looking forward to new features in the next release. One of the main features is the cloud storage integration, which was one of my main required features. I've had more difficult experiences with other platforms than with this one."
"The stability could be improved."
"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."
"The usability of IBM Spectrum Protect could be improved, specifically additional features to the product in the operations center. Additional reporting facilities and stronger reporting tools such as build dashboards would be beneficial."
"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)."
"IBM Spectrum Protect could be improved by making the installation easier. Once it's implemented, it's okay. IBM started lagging behind when things started moving to storage and cloud-based solutions. Even though they've recently released updates that give cloud-based protection, personally, I still believe they are not up to par with the likes of Rubrik. The entire product is a little bit clumsy because they have co-joined two different products, so it's complex. Even from a sales/explaining to people what it does point of view, it's complex. Whereas, if you take more current products, it's a single box solution. You reel it in, you fire it up, you do a couple of points and clicks, and off you go, whereas the IBM system is seriously complex. There's a lot of training involved and it's a massively difficult product to sell at this point in time."
"The licensing isn't very clear. They should work to simply or clarify the cost structure."
"The software is complex; setup is complex."
"It's a global feature that the customer thinks they don't have enough tools to manage, to copy, to delay, and to classify the object file in the backup directory. So they need more tools to manage files in object directory."
"The solution has the option to take backup on-prem servers, but it's not very efficient."
"The GUI could be slightly improved."
"There is room for improvement in stability."
"The GUI has room for improvement."
"The UI is a little dated and hard to use. Some of the buttons are a bit small. You have to go into the menu to get the settings you want."
"More documentation would be helpful, especially some step-by-step documents for recovery scenarios."
"Additional features I would like to see are the ability to restore to different vendors, AWS and Azure, and/or the ability or take the information out of the AWS cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The product is low cost. It is very cool when we design it to using licensing based on post capacity."
"It is fairly reasonable as compared to other solutions in the market."
"IBM Spectrum Protect has a fixed price and includes no additional costs."
"IBM Storage Protect is not expensive and fits the needs of all business types. The licensing is based on a capacity-based model. You can take a license for one, two, or three terabytes."
"Some of the new advanced features are definitely more into cost savings, e.g., dedupe compression, so doing more with less."
"The pricing model of this solution is another difficult area, it's very sophisticated in the way they charge. It's based on PBU, which is a type of processor, how, many processors, and you need to put everything into an equation. However, they have different ways of charging or licensing. One way is a back-end volume or front-end volume, which is quite complicated."
"It can be perceived as expensive since it is designed for enterprise use."
"AWS adds more features and offer things for free, or cheaply. Therefore, we will be evaluating AWS Data Lifecycle Manager, because it will probably do backups. Thus, make sure the product that you are using is competitive or adds more value than AWS."
"It's very economical and worth the cost."
"The purchasing process through the AWS Marketplace is easy. Just click the button."
"It has very good pricing per instance and comes with three options, for both small and large environments, to fit your needs."
"The price is not cheap, nor is it costly."
"The pricing and licensing on AWS is fine, because you can do it for smaller tiers depending on your number of instances, so it's not that scary."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
18%
Healthcare Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
What do you like most about N2WS Backup & Recovery?
N2WS Backup & Recovery is very easy to use and configure backup for AWS instances.
What needs improvement with N2WS Backup & Recovery?
N2WS Backup & Recovery efficiently takes cloud backups on EC2 instances. The solution has the option to take backup on-prem servers, but it's not very efficient.
What is your primary use case for N2WS Backup & Recovery?
We use N2WS Backup & Recovery for backing up EC2 instances.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

IBM Spectrum Discover
N2WS Backup & Recovery, N2WS Cloud Protection Manager, N2W Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial/BYOL
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CEMEX
Deloitte, NASA, Johnson & Johnson, Dyson, Deuthsche Bahn, Skechers, Allan Gray, Hewlett Packard, St. John's University, City of Oakland
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Storage Protect vs. N2W and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.