IBM has announced IBM Object Storage, an IBM Cloud service that enables developers to interactively compose and connect object storage into their apps.
This service, which comes as a follow-on to IBM’s recent acquisition of Cleversafe, provides app developers with a scalable, API-accessible platform to store and retrieve unstructured data, as well as build apps around this content. Available in beta on Bluemix, IBM’s Platform as a Service, Object Storage also enables developers to access this valuable data from external apps.
IBM Object Storage makes it faster, easier and more secure for developers to tap into and store growing volumes of unstructured data, including images, documents and videos. It’s estimated that out of the 2.5 billion gigabytes of data which are created every day, 80 percent is comprised of unstructured content.
As the volume of the world’s digital images, photos, sound files and more grows, so does the value of this unstructured data to developers building intelligent, useful and creative apps. But, this bulky and hard-to-understand data is not only challenging to store efficiently, it is also difficult to store in a way that enables app creators to easily tap into it and seamlessly build apps around the valuable intelligence the unstructured data offers.
IBM Object Storage, easily accessible on IBM Cloud, enables developers to compose and connect object-based storage into their apps – using a single API to retrieve it rapidly and securely from apps both inside and outside of Bluemix, IBM said. This enables developers to build and scale their apps around this content, and in turn, create new ways to tap into its value.
Moreover, to help solve the challenge of how to capture, store and gain intelligence from rapidly increasing amounts of unstructured data, IBM has built a portfolio of technologies – including IBM Object Storage and its recent acquisition of Cleversafe. Cleversafe’s portfolio enables businesses to efficiently store and manage massive amounts of data throughout their organization, helping them to scale and connect into large-scale content repositories, backup, archives and more.
Through tapping the OpenStack Object Storage (Swift) API for API-based data access and OpenStack Identity (Keystone) for authentication, IBM Object Storage offers developers:
· The ability to compose and bind apps to object files – both inside and outside of Bluemix
· Identity management and authentication to help protect against unauthorized access to
object-based data
· A service dashboard user interface for simple management
· Object browser, drag-and-drop upload and download from the developer’s desktop
· OpenStack Swift API and SDKs to access the object store
· Service keys to access and use Object Storage with external apps and services
· Security isolation for each object storage instance within Bluemix
Developers can find IBM Object Storage in the Bluemix catalog, or view an overview video on the IBM Bluemix Developers Community blog.
Meanwhile, in other IBM Bluemix related news, Big Blue recently announced a new cloud-based service that enables developers to automatically translate cloud and mobile apps into nine different languages.
The new service, IBM Globalization Pipeline, is available in beta on Bluemix. Big Blue said the Globalization Pipeline will help to open up new global markets to companies without requiring them to rebuild or redeploy their applications.
The beta version will support English as the base language and nine additional languages including: French, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Korean.