We compared IBM Spectrum Protect and Nakivo based on user reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: IBM Spectrum Protect is highly regarded for its ability to integrate with tape libraries and its customization options. Users also praised Spectrum Protect for its compatibility with various products, scalability, and stability. Nakivo is praised for its offsite backup to Synology NAS and seamless cloud integration. IBM Spectrum Protect could improve its integration with cloud services and make its interface more user-friendly. Nakivo could benefit from improvements in its remote upgrade capabilities, SNMP features, and application backup.
Service and Support: IBM’s customer service is described as high quality, friendly, knowledgeable, and responsive. At the same time, some said the support process can be lengthy. Nakivo's support is praised for being quick, considerate, and attentive.
Ease of Deployment: IBM Spectrum Protect's initial setup is challenging and demands skilled professionals to configure multiple parameters and features. This process can be time-consuming. Nakivo's setup was described as straightforward. A few users said the deployment was somewhat complex but not excessively difficult.
Pricing: IBM Spectrum Protect is considered expensive. The pricing model is complex, taking into account factors like processor type and volume. Nakivo offers lower licensing costs and a flexible pricing structure. Nakivo provides cost-efficient backups at a competitive price and even offers a free license for one year for up to five VMs.
ROI: Users have realized benefits from IBM Spectrum Protect’s data protection and retrieval. They appreciate its ability to reduce storage requirements with larger tape sizes. Nakivo ensures a favorable return on investment with a reasonable total cost of ownership and reduced testing expenditures.
Comparison Results: IBM Spectrum Protect is a reliable, customizable solution that allows smooth integration with tape libraries. At the same time, some say that the user interface could be more intuitive and Spectrum Protect could integrate better with the cloud. Nakivo is a powerful, cost-effective solution that seamlessly integrates with the cloud, but it could use some enhancements in its SNMP features and remote upgrading functionality.
"Our performance is better."
"It helps our customers protect their data, especially with stuff like ransomware, compliance, and regulatory requirements."
"It has a lot more capabilities and functions than a lot of other products. Even though it is more complex, the reason is because it gives you a lot more features. This is what I prefer, especially for a long retention."
"All other products contain the same features, but when I'm backing up an IBM Power server I feel more comfortable with IBM Spectrum Protect because it's the same vendor."
"The amount of data that it protects with very little storage by doing incremental forever is one of its most valuable features."
"The scalability of IBM Spectrum Protect is good."
"Once it is completed properly, it is low maintenance. Most of the functions do not require much deliberation. It is all the blueprints and technologies laid out, and it is straight forward."
"The backup of Sybase databases is the most valuable feature in the existing environment. They have got the most documentation out there on the internet for its software protection. The documentation is excellent, and there are a lot of blogs, websites. Because it's still one of the oldest products out there for data protection, there are also lots of people who have a lot of experience in using this solution."
"We are able to take backups on a regular interval and restore data/VMs as we choose making the process work as advertised."
"This product has a very clean and intuitive GUI."
"Backups are working smoothly with Nakivo Backup."
"The upgrade process is manual but very simple to do."
"Nakivo has improved our organization largely due to the fact that it is an extremely robust backup system."
"The ability to restore in a catastrophic event is priceless, since every company must use a backup solution of some sort."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of creating a backup copy job to get the backups to a second device."
"It is easy-to-use."
"Restoring massive files is a very time-consuming process."
"The solution is evolving, so it has to be evolved to fit all new types of software requirements too."
"Their support is lacking. I've talked to their developers and stuff in the last couple of weeks and they reassure me that some people have retired, and they're working on getting that bumped back up. But the support lacks a lot to be desired at this point."
"My customers are not always happy with the Level 1 support. Sometimes, it just takes too long for the response to come, which is probably something that needs to be addressed."
"The only thing that I would like to have a little more of is insight in reporting. I find that Spectrum Protect needs a lot of monitoring, and I have to actually log into the servers."
"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."
"It would be helpful if the solution included some sort of ransomware protection."
"Perhaps if they could add replication to a second site or third site from the same console, that would be helpful. Currently, we have to connect to another console."
"One complaint I have is the dashboard flashing as it reloads/refreshes itself. The program was not always like that and it happened after an update at some point."
"There is a lack of native (web-based) update functionality."
"It would be helpful to be able to have a custom footprint so that only the required features are installed."
"It would be great if they had a Let's Encrypt integration."
"We'd like to see a legacy environment backup, like AIX, etc."
"It would be interesting if it were possible to integrate a mobile app to monitor the system in real-time."
"The interface might be improved, but the interface of every product might be improved."
"Integrations maybe helpful for NAKIVO. I think end-to-end backup and user backup will be useful to have. The price could be reduced as well. I also think that AD integration should be more available."
IBM Spectrum Protect is ranked 17th in Backup and Recovery with 146 reviews while NAKIVO Backup & Replication is ranked 6th in Backup and Recovery with 84 reviews. IBM Spectrum Protect is rated 8.0, while NAKIVO Backup & Replication is rated 9.4. The top reviewer of IBM Spectrum Protect writes "Performance and recoveries are better, and customers are happier with performance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NAKIVO Backup & Replication writes "Good deduplication, easy to configure, and offers a free version". IBM Spectrum Protect is most compared with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, Veeam Backup & Replication, Commvault Cloud, Rubrik and Azure Backup, whereas NAKIVO Backup & Replication is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup, Acronis Cyber Protect, Rubrik and BDRSuite. See our IBM Spectrum Protect vs. NAKIVO Backup & Replication report.
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