IBM Storage Protect vs NetApp Cloud Backup comparison

IBM and NetApp are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.5, while NetApp is ranked #27 with an average rating of 9.0. IBM holds a 2.3% mindshare in BRS, compared to NetApp’s 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

IBM Storage Protect

Read 3 IBM Storage Protect reviews

4,197 Views
3,525 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

NetApp Cloud Backup

Read 4 NetApp Cloud Backup reviews

826 Views
512 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Storage Protect

NetApp Cloud Backup

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2025

NetApp Cloud Backup and IBM Storage Protect compete in data protection and management. IBM Storage Protect is superior due to its comprehensive features and value perception despite its cost.

Features: NetApp Cloud Backup offers seamless cloud integration, strong data recovery, and competitive pricing. IBM Storage Protect provides robust security features, extensive system compatibility, and advanced data protection capabilities, appealing to enterprises.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both offer straightforward deployment. NetApp Cloud Backup is intuitive, while IBM Storage Protect has a broad support network, extensive documentation, and responsive service suited for complex environments.

Pricing and ROI: NetApp Cloud Backup boasts competitive pricing and strong ROI for small to medium businesses. IBM Storage Protect may have a higher initial cost, but its comprehensive features offer significant long-term ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Storage Protect vs. NetApp Cloud Backup Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Storage Protect vs. NetApp Cloud Backup

July 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 Storage Protect

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

14th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NetApp Cloud Backup

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

27th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Deduplication Software (10th), Disk Based Backup Systems (4th), Cloud Backup (27th), Cloud Storage Gateways (5th)

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 NetApp Cloud Backup is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

Syed Habib

Head of Infrastructure Security (S.A.V.P) at EXIM Bank Ltd

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.

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Abbasi Poonawala

Chief Enterprise Architect at Alinma Bank

Simplifies our backups with an agentless backup manager, but needs better integration with in-house applications

One area that can be improved is around how we define the different KPIs. In particular, the business KPIs. I have my own in-house application for the business KPIs, so for example, with our policies around retention, which is a period of seven years, I have to read these parameters from other applications and I need them to integrate well. NetApp Cloud Backup Manager should help to get this integrated seamlessly with other applications, meaning that it will populate the data around the different parameters. These parameters could be things like the retention period, the backup schedule, or anything. It might be an ITSM ticket, where it's a workflow that is triggered somewhere, and the ITSM ticket has been created for a particular environment like my development environment, an INT environment, or a UAT environment. This kind of process needs to integrate well with my own application, and there are some challenges. For example, if it allows for consuming of RESTful APIs, that's how we will usually integrate, but there are certain challenges when it comes to integrating with our own application around KPIs, whether it's business KPIs or technical KPIs. What I want is to populate that data from my own applications. So we have have the headroom in the KPI, and we have the throughput, the volumes, the transactions per second, etc., which are all defined. And these are the global parameters. They affect all the lines of business. It's a central application that is consumed by most of the lines of business and it's all around the KPIs. Earlier, it used to be based on Quest Foglight, which is an application that was taken up and customized. It was made in-house as a core service, and used as a core building block. But our use of Quest Foglight has become a bit outdated. There is no more support available, and it's been there as a kind of legacy application for more than ten years now in the organization. And now it get down to the question: Is this an investment or will we need to divest ourselves of it? So there has to be an option to remediate it out. In that case, one possibility is to integrate the existing application and it gets completely decommissioned. Here it would help if there were some better ways of defining or handling the KPIs in the Cloud Manager, so that most of the parameters are not defined directly by me. Those will be the global parameters that are defined across all the lines of business. There are some integration challenges when it comes to this, and I've spoken to the support team who say they have the REST APIs, but the integration still isn't going as smooth as it could be. Most of the time, when things aren't working out, we need dedicated engineers to be put in for the entire integration. And then it becomes more of a challenge on top of everything. So if the Cloud Manager isn't being fed all the kinds of parameters from the backup strategy around the ITSM and incident tickets, or backup schedules, or anything related to the backup policies, then it takes a while. Ideally, I would want it to be read directly from our in-house applications. And this is more to do with our kind of product processes; that is, it's not our own choice to decide. The risk management team has mandated this as part of the compliance, that we have to strictly enforce the KPIs, the headroom, and the rest of the global parameters which are defined for the different lines of business. So if my retention period changes from seven years to, let's say, 10 years or 15 years, then those rules have to be strictly enforced. Ultimately, we would like better support for ITSM. The ITSM tools like ServiceNow or BMC Remedy are already adding multiple new features, so they have to be upgraded over a period of time, and that means NetApp has to provision for that and factor it in. Some of the AI-based capabilities are there now, and those things have to be incorporated somehow. One last thing is that NetApp could provide better flash storage. Since they're already on block storage and are doing well in that segment, it makes sense that they will have to step up when it comes to flash array storage and so on. I have been evaluating NetApp's flash array storage solutions versus some others like Toshiba's flash array and Fujitsu's storage array, which are quite cost-effective.

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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

"Traditional storage works perfectly with it."

"The solution offers very good flexibility."

"Regarding technical support, if one has the entire enterprise support, I would rate it a nine out of ten...Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."

"For initial setup, we started with the blueprints, which were great. The blueprints allowed us to be able to decide if we needed to use small, medium,k or large. Because we are a large environment, we used a large blueprint. Once we followed everything in the blueprint, it was a smooth transition from there."

"Every time we go and try to get a file, we can get it. Restores are quick and the data is always there."

"The solution is really scalable."

"It is pretty scalable. It will scale to anything."

"It is a very good and mature enterprise product. Once it is set up and everything is put in, you don't have to manage it. It actually runs automatically by itself."

More IBM Storage Protect pros

"One feature that works well for us is that the Cloud Manager is a completely agentless solution. There's a similar dashboard on both the versions for on-premises and the cloud, and with reference to the Cloud Manager, it's a little faster because there's nothing to be installed as such. Being agentless, it doesn't require any agent to be deployed on the targets where the backups are triggered."

"I rate the scalability a ten out of ten...It has a great impact on our business because we have the infrastructure deployed globally on four continents around the world."

"Scalability is very good."

"NetApp Cloud Backup performance is good and they have beneficial technology."

Cons

"The product should improve its GUI. It should also support Windows clustering."

"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."

"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."

"It doesn't integrate with storage pools, with a normal pool. I'd like to see that."

"IBM Spectrum Protect is not a very user-friendly tool."

"Probably educating the virtual group who are not as used to the product. Most of our expertise is with AIX servers and virtual server backups."

"I would like to see a way to have "always on" implemented."

"IBM Spectrum Protect does have a lot of the features that we need, but I think they need to improve their backup virtualization and backup for container."

More IBM Storage Protect cons

"NetApp Cloud Backup could improve by being easier to use. Veeam solution is easier to use."

"One area that can be improved is around how we define the different KPIs. In particular, the business KPIs. I have my own in-house application for the business KPIs, so for example, with our policies around retention, which is a period of seven years, I have to read these parameters from other applications and I need them to integrate well."

"Integration and reporting could be improved."

"NetApp has a nasty way of dealing with the license for the product's on-premises virtual NetApp appliance that you need in your whole architecture, and it is not directly linked to NetApp Cloud Backup."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"License-wise regarding IBM, it's licensed per terabyte. And that is after compression and deduplication."

"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."

"IBM Spectrum Protect can be considered an averagely-priced product."

"When compared to the cost of other enterprise products, it seems to be in the same range. However, compared to the cost of non-enterprise products, it is really high."

"The different license models can give good benefits to the end customer."

"The licensing fees are on a yearly basis, which for us it is about R400,000 (approximately $27,000 USD)."

"The solution is not cheap."

"The price of IBM Spectrum Protect is expensive. However, there are a few packages and it is unclear because, for the entry suite they have both options, which are the back-end storage capacity and the front-end storage capacity."

More IBM Storage Protect pricing and cost advice

"NetApp Cloud Backup has a subscription-based model and it is paid annually."

"Cost could be lower."

"Our usage depends on the number of licenses we have. On the cloud, it's a pay-to-use kind of model which suits our needs well. Once we have the Cloud Manager installed, the licensing process is okay, regardless of whether we're running backups in the cloud or on-premises. Sometimes, we have to restrict the number of users as per the contractual agreement and in this case we simply cut down on the licensing."

"If one is not cost-effective and ten is a highly cost-effective product, I rate the tool as a three. The tool is not so cheap."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Retailer

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What's the 3-2-1 data protection that NetApp Cloud Backup offers?

Hi, the 3-2-1 data protection from this product is related to a backup strategy with the same name. I'm assuming you don't know about it so I'll tell you in a few words. In its essence, this backup...

See all answers

Is NetApp Cloud Backup secure for backup?

I've just started using NetApp Cloud Backup but my initial reason behind choosing it in the first place is that they advertise their high-security approach. So basically, they give you ransomware p...

See all answers

Is NetApp Cloud Backup expensive in your opinion?

It depends on how much exactly you count as expensive. For me, NetApp Cloud Backup isn't too expensive. I say that based on the services it provides and on the way it provides them. I think it's im...

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Storage Protect

Compared 14% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Storage Protect

Compared 14% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Storage Protect

Compared 10% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs IBM Storage Protect

Compared 9% of the time

HPE StoreOnce vs IBM Storage Protect

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Storage Protect Competitors

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs NetApp Cloud Backup

Compared 22% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs NetApp Cloud Backup

Compared 17% of the time

Rubrik vs NetApp Cloud Backup

Compared 15% of the time

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs NetApp Cloud Backup

Compared 15% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs NetApp Cloud Backup

Compared 12% of the time

More NetApp Cloud Backup Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Backup and Recovery

July 2025

Download IBM Storage Protect product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Backup

August 2025

Download NetApp Cloud Backup product report

Also Known As

IBM Spectrum Discover

No data available

Overview

IBM Storage Protect offers data protection and management to secure critical business information efficiently. It's designed to be a scalable and flexible solution for data backup, recovery, and archive needs in complex IT environments.

IBM Storage Protect delivers comprehensive data protection by integrating backup, recovery, and archiving functionalities. It supports a range of workloads and infrastructures, from on-premises to cloud environments, facilitating efficient data management. Its platform provides seamless scalability to meet evolving business needs, underpinned by reliable security measures. Organizations leverage its capabilities to ensure business continuity and minimize data loss risks, making it vital in a data-driven world.

What are the key features of IBM Storage Protect?

Advanced Data Protection: Offers robust encryption and data integrity for secure backup processes.
Scalability: Grows with your data demands, supporting large data volumes without compromising performance.
Cloud Integration: Seamlessly integrates with cloud platforms, enhancing backup strategies with hybrid options.
Automated Operations: Simplifies management tasks with automation, reducing manual intervention and errors.

What benefits should users expect when evaluating IBM Storage Protect?

Cost Efficiency: Reduces storage costs by optimizing backup processes and data retention strategies.
Data Safety: Ensures data accessibility and integrity during recovery efforts, building trust in data protection strategies.
Operational Efficiency: Boosts productivity through streamlined and automated backup management workflows.
Compliance Readiness: Helps maintain compliance with data protection regulations by providing thorough reporting and audit trails.

Industries like finance and healthcare implement IBM Storage Protect to safeguard sensitive information against threats. In financial services, it's crucial for maintaining client data confidentiality, while healthcare institutions use it to protect patient records, ensuring both accessibility and compliance with regulations.

IBM

NetApp Cloud Backup is a fully integrated service for cloud backup and restoration. It was created to comply fully with NetApp's native data management software ONTAP, used for hybrid cloud experience. NetApp Cloud Backup is used to create backup and restoration for the protection and archiving of data, databases, and virtual machines related to the Cloud and On-Premises data in ONTAP. The way NetApp Cloud Backup works is by automatically creating block-level incremental backups. This ensures that the created backups are very fast and easy to restore. It is suitable for data protection regarding on-premises software as well as in the public cloud. NetApp Cloud Backup provides users with the ability to protect their cloud data at affordable prices and with a user-friendly interface so they don't need a lot of technical knowledge to be able to secure their cloud storage.

The copies created by NetApp Cloud Backup can be stored in the user's personal object storage in the cloud as well as on premises with StorageGRID - NetApp's storage platform. The backup copies can be restored to the original source or to a different source in Cloud Volumes ONTAP. NetApp Cloud Backup provides backups to AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

NetApp Cloud Backup Features

The features NetApp Cloud Backup provides include:

Data recovery: NetApp Cloud Backup provides restoration of individual files as well as full volume recovery, based on the user's needs. The data can be retrieved from a specific point in time, giving clients even more assurance that their cloud-stored data can and will be saved.
Indexed catalog: Another feature that NetApp Cloud Backup offers is a search catalog, providing multiple search criteria and the ability to locate a file across all backups.
Various archival tiers: This feature provides the ability for multi-cloud support, including top services like Google Cloud Storage Archive, Glacier Deep Archive, Amazon S3 Glacier, and Azure Archive Storage.
Encryption: End-to-end encryption allows users to feel more secure about their data.
Cloud technology features: Additional features regarding cloud technology include the options for movement from CAPEX to OPEX and mixing BYOL and PAYGO.

NetApp Cloud Backup Benefits

In addition to enhanced security and protection from malicious attacks, the advantages of using NetApp Cloud Backup include:

Aligns with the 3-2-1 backup strategy
Various levels of protection of data, including encryption and full customer control
Protection against ransomware, using different security methods
A wide variety of supported workloads, including databases, VMs, applications, NAS, and K8s

Reviews from Real Users

Abbasi P., a User at a financial services firm, likes that NetApp Cloud Backup is a completely agentless solution.

A Service Manager at a tech services company values its stability, scalability, and good technical support.

NetApp

Sample Customers

CEMEX

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

IBM Storage Protect vs. NetApp Cloud Backup

July 2025

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