The co-creation train keeps rolling, with more major technology companies joining forces to streamline access to game-changing technologies in the era of AI. One of the latest initiatives comes from IBM and AWS.
In a recent announcement, IBM said it has been working alongside AWS on a new cloud database offering. The two companies are combining the IBM Db2 database with Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) to address various data management challenges.
Their new fully-managed cloud service — Amazon RDS for Db2 — will enable customers to optimize data management for AI workloads across hybrid cloud environments. By doing so, Amazon RDS for Db2 customers can maximize the scalability, cost savings, and performance afforded by cloud-native architectures when tackling complex AI developments.
Established Database Products
IBM Db2 is a pioneering product that now takes the form of cloud-native database designed for low-latency transactions and scalable real-time analytics. Amazon RDS is an easy-to-use suite of managed services for scaling and operating databases in the cloud.
By combining the ease of use and automated data administration capabilities of Amazon RDS with the capacity, security, and availability of IBM Db2, Amazon RDS for Db2 provides users with a powerful platform for AI workloads. IBM and AWS have considered every option for deployment, including on-premises, on AWS, or on a hybrid cloud architecture. Amazon RDS for Db2 can also help customers migrate their self-managed Db2 databases to AWS.
Why Now?
According to a recent study, Amazon RDS customers have reported significant business benefits when moving to a fully managed service. An AWS/IDC study found customers that migrated to a managed database on Amazon RDS could manage up to 60% more databases per database administrator and operational costs were cut by an average of 39%.
“We are pleased to collaborate with IBM to make it easier for customers to manage and modernize the highly-regarded and trusted IBM Db2 database in the cloud,” said Jeff Carter, VP Databases & Migrations, AWS. “For over a decade, Amazon RDS has offered hundreds of thousands of customers proven operational expertise, security best practices, and best-in-class managed database services for their mission-critical workloads.
“With Amazon RDS for Db2, customers can offload time-consuming database administrative tasks, such as provisioning, backups, patching, and monitoring, and use Amazon RDS multi-AZ deployments for high availability and durability,” Carter added. “Customers can also easily take advantage of the broad portfolio of AWS services, including the ability to accelerate their generative AI priorities.”
Cloud Wars Founder Bob Evans has previously noted IBM’s strategic shift, and his insights have certainly come to pass with this latest announcement: “After wisely abandoning plans to compete in the hyperscaler business, the new IBM under Arvind Krishna has built billion-dollar cloud partnerships with Microsoft and Amazon, and expects to match that threshold with a few other Cloud Wars Top 10 companies as well,” he said.
While this close collaboration between IBM and AWS builds on the direction IBM took beginning in 2022, it is also intrinsically linked with the AI boom. With Amazon RDS for Db2, customers can accelerate AI development by leveraging IBM’s extensive portfolio of databases, data fabric products, watsonx data, AI, and some AI governance capabilities in AWS.
