Ever since IBM[1] unveiled Cloud Pak for Data as a cloud-native integrated set of analytics and AI platform, we've been wondering when IBM would take the next step and announce a full-blown managed cloud service. It's now starting to happen as IBM is rolling out IBM Cloud Pak for Data as a Service.
Roll back the tape to last spring[2] when we reviewed IBM Cloud Satellite[3]; we noted that IBM's primary cloud message has been about multi-cloud, or at least cloud-agnostic. Propelled by Red Hat OpenShift, IBM carved out such a strategy for this managed Kubernetes environment where you could deploy open source software yourself on the hardware or public cloud of your choice or choose IBM to run a managed OpenShift service[4] for you in the IBM Cloud. That is now getting repeated with Cloud Pak for Data.
To recap, Cloud Pak for Data consists of an integrated set of services for building analytics and machine learning models. Unusual among hybrid cloud offerings, Cloud Pak for Data also has a third party ecosystem of supported services. Among them are MongoDB[5] and CockroachDB[6] – these are partner services that are supported on the platform but are bought by the customer through BYOL and installed separately. It is part of a broader portfolio of integrated offerings of prepackage tools to create your own PaaS environments. Besides Cloud Pak for Data, there are other Cloud Paks for developing cloud-native applications[7]; API integration[8]; automating online workflows[9]; multi-cloud management[10]; and security[11].
The platform has been available in several form factors. You can implement it on any cloud as a software only