IBM Collaborates with AWS to Launch a New Cloud Database Offering, Enabling Customers to Optimize Data Management for AI Workloads

Combines IBM Db2 database and Amazon RDS to help businesses manage data with flexibility, security, and scalability to help unlock greater value

IBM announced at AWS re:Invent 2023 that it has been working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) on the general availability of Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for Db2, a fully managed cloud offering designed to make it easier for database customers to manage data for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads across hybrid cloud environments.

Businesses are turning to AI to unlock insights that can lead to more informed decisions, automation of repetitive tasks, and greater efficiencies. These AI technologies are powered by massive amounts of data that require modern data stores residing on cloud-native architectures to provide scalability, cost optimization, enhanced performance, and business continuity.

Amazon RDS for Db2 customers now have the option to modernize on premises, on AWS, or to deploy a hybrid cloud architecture, to optimize AI workloads. For customers moving to AWS, Amazon RDS for Db2 can help them to migrate their existing, self-managed Db2 databases to the cloud — helping to automate time consuming database administrative tasks such as provisioning, backups, software patching, and monitoring.

“Digital transformation is a strategic imperative for nearly every one of our clients. By working with AWS to bring Db2 to Amazon RDS, we’re helping companies prepare for the next generation of applications, analytics, and AI workloads that will power the modern economy,” said Dinesh Nirmal, Senior Vice President of Products, IBM Software. “IBM and AWS are redefining the possibilities of cloud database innovation, removing the complexity of modernization and empowering organizations to realize the full potential of their data.”

Amazon RDS customers have seen significant business value by moving to a fully managed service. Results of an AWS and IDC study of RDS users found study participants who moved to a managed database on Amazon RDS were able to manage on average up to 60%1 more databases per DBA and estimated an average of 39%1 lower database operational costs over three years – enabling DBAs to focus on high value work like application modernization or query optimization.

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“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. Customers can also easily take advantage of the broad portfolio of AWS services, including ability to accelerate their generative AI priorities.”

Amazon RDS for Db2 combines the operational expertise and ease of use of Amazon RDS to automate database administration with IBM Db2’s decades of experience running mission critical workloads for some of the largest banks, supply chain operations, and retail/e-commerce businesses in the world. Many long-time customers who participated in the private beta already see the value of this offering and are looking forward to accelerating productivity and modernization initiatives.

“The IT leaders at our cross-industry clients see this as a compelling value proposition,” said Frank Fillmore, owner of The Fillmore Group, an IBM business partner that participated in the beta. “Amazon RDS for Db2 brings together the foundational expertise of IBM in relational database technology and the cloud innovations of AWS to help deliver the best of deployment efficiency, elastic scaling, and cost savings.”

As Amazon RDS for Db2 customers accelerate their modernization and AI initiatives, they will be able to leverage an array of IBM’s integrated data and AI capabilities on AWS to manage data and scale AI workloads. This includes IBM’s entire portfolio of commercial databases, data fabric solutions, and watsonx data, AI, and select AI governance capabilities — all of which can help customers build, scale, and run the next generation of trusted AI applications. Amazon RDS for Db2 customers will now be able to unify, transform and share transactional data for AI, using Amazon RDS for Db2’s native integrations with Db2 Warehouse and watsonx.data open data lakehouse on AWS.

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