IBM told the media that it is expanding its portfolio of Cloud Data Services with more than 25 services, and all can be accessed on the IBM Cloud.
At least two IT groups will benefit from the new services. Coders will be able to craft, deploy and manage apps for mobile gadgets and Web services, while marketing specialists can look at hidden trends in the online environment by consulting data analytics in the cloud.
A plus of IBM's hybrid cloud services is that it works on many cloud providers. What's more, the technology relies on open source ecosystems and architectures such as Apache Spark, which means that data can easily be transferred to and from various services.
IBM already features self-service for data preparation, migration and embedment, as well as tools that help users explore and model based on data batches. Here are the cloud data services that the company opened.
IBM Compose Enterprise
This platform assists development teams in coding modern Web-scale apps at a quicker pace. It achieves the goal by allowing developers to deploy business-ready open-source databases on their proprietary cloud servers, and it takes very little to do so.
IBM Graph
The service is designed on Apache TinkerPop, and is the first IBM fully managed graph database service. Developers who use it to expand business-ready apps will be able to use time recommendations, network analysis uses, Internet of Things and fraud detection.
IBM Predictive Analytics
With this offering, developers can assemble self-build machine learning models into apps. This is useful, as it delivers product use case predictions without needing the assistance of a data analyst.
"We want to let people dip their toe in the water of machine learning and predictive analytics with auto-modeling," IBM's CTO of Cloud Data Services, Adam Kocoloski, says.
IBM Analytics Exchange
This open data exchange encompasses a catalog of more than 150 publicly available datasets, useful when you have to analyze and integrate the sets into apps.
"Data is the common thread within the enterprise, regardless of where its source might be," says Derek Schoettle, general manager for IBM's Analytics Platform and Cloud Data Services.
He notes that the past practices forced data handlers to use separate systems to process data needs.
"Our goal is to move data into the future by providing a one-stop shop to access, build, develop and explore data," Schoettle adds.
One big advantage in the IBM Cloud Data Services is that these provide coders with unprecedented scalability and flexibility in building, implementing and managing Web and mobile cloud applications. In addition, data scientists can operate across businesses because of the aggregated data.
IBM invested consistently in Apache Spark and is keen on expanding its mission to provide enterprise-class support for both data handlers and open source developers.
Apache Spark contains commerce and analytics solutions customized by IBM, 25 of which were modified to boost their real-time processing speed.
IBM's focus on cloud services was noticeable since last year, when the company purchased cloud-based video services provider Clearleap and computing system Merge Healthcare.
"Clearleap joins IBM at a tipping point in the industry when visual information and visual communication are not just important to consumers, but are exploding across every industry," senior vice president of IBM Cloud, Robert LeBlanc, notes.
The Merge Healthcare transaction cost a staggering $1 billion, but for this sum IBM got a cognitive computing system, named Watson, which is capable of recognizing medical images.
