Advanced Computing in the Age of AI | Thursday, March 28, 2024

IBM Adds Analytics, Data Warehousing to Bluemix 

IBM is launching a new set of analytics and data warehousing services on its Bluemix platform-as-a-service in a push to add more analytics capabilities to cloud-based applications.

Among the Bluemix upgrades announced on Thursday (Aug. 13) are streaming analytics service and a cloud data-warehousing tool called dashDB. The latter integrates massive parallel processing. IBM said the new cloud tools are designed to help developers using Bluemix to integrate data analytics and visualization tools into new applications.

The streaming analytics service released for open beta testing this week is said to scale to thousands of sources on the cloud. It is billed as a more efficient means of visualizing data, a feature that can help expand use of analytics tools from data scientists to a broader base of enterprise users.

IBM also stressed the ability to scale the streaming analytics tool so that infrastructure can be built out as needed.

Meanwhile, the dashDB cloud data-warehouse service is designed to simplify information management, analytics and business intelligence operations in the cloud. IBM said it added massively parallel processing capabilities to the service as a way to enable faster query processing as well as for overall scaling.

Also included are compatibility with Oracle and Netezza, IBM's data-warehouse appliances and analytics applications. The goal was to leverage the service's parallel processing cluster architecture to make it easier for new users to connect with existing databases.

The data-warehouse service also includes built-in Netezza analytics libraries along with integration with R, Cognos, IBM Watson Analytics and third party business intelligence tool sets like Tableau.

IBM launched Bluemix last year with a $1 billion investment in the PaaS initiative. It claims to be adding more than 15,000 new users per week, including a "near doubling" since May driven primarily by enterprise sign ups. IBM also said Bluemix is among the largest deployments on Cloud Foundry, the application platform for cloud computing.

Bluemix combines more than 100 cloud-based development tools from IBM and its partners. The platform is designed to deliver pre-packaged code for analytics, social, mobile and security applications.

IBM is attempting to leverage its PaaS market traction to boost its overall public, private and hybrid cloud revenues. The company recently reported cloud revenue totaling about $7.7 billion over the previous 12 months.

Analysts note that PaaS services like Bluemix are one of the leading drivers of the cloud market. Market watcher IDC is forecasting that PaaS will be among "the fastest growing categories, driven by major upticks in developer cloud services adoption and big data-driven solutions."

The market watcher is also projecting that public IT cloud services spending could reach $127 billion by 2018 as the market enters "a critical innovation stage" that is expected to add an "explosion" of new cloud-based applications.

About the author: George Leopold

George Leopold has written about science and technology for more than 30 years, focusing on electronics and aerospace technology. He previously served as executive editor of Electronic Engineering Times. Leopold is the author of "Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom" (Purdue University Press, 2016).

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