IBM cloud container service now available from Australian datacentres
IBM has announced the availability of its cloud container service in its datacentres in Sydney and Melbourne.
The service is available on IBM Cloud and uses the open source Kubernetes system, with Docker as the container engine.
Previously, organisations looking to use the service would have to tap into it via IBM's global datacentre network. However, having container services available from Australian datacentres opens up opportunities for organisations operating in tightly-regulated industries, such as finance, to use the service for production workloads, while ensuring data remains onshore, said Andrew Kupetz, director and CTO of Cloud Computing at IBM Australia.
"Container services available from Australian datacentres are an important factor for businesses who need some data to remain on shore to address regulation and compliance, security requirements, and WAN latency," Kupetz said in a statement.
"IBM's new local offering will provide clients with increased performance, whilst the dual site deployment across Sydney and Melbourne ensures high availability and a strong disaster recovery posture."
Capabilities of the container service include fully-managed and highly-available Kubernetes clusters; native Kubernetes APIs built on IBM Cloud; and flexible isolation and capacity controls, allowing customers to design container clusters to fit specific needs.
Additional capabilities include built-in security scanning and integration into IBM's X-Force Exchange; live-scanning and risk analysis capabilities for each container; automatic load balancing; and easy access to Watson APIs, blockchain, cloud data services, and IoT tools.
IBM also said that developers have the choice to store and access data across multiple platforms and repositories without impacting security.
451 Research predicts application containers will grow at 40 percent a year, faster than any other solution type this year and the next, despite making up a relatively small portion, 10 percent, of the "cloud-enabling technologies" market which includes virtualisation, containers, private PaaS, and automation and management software.
The research firm, which projects growth in application containers from $762 million in 2016 to $2.7 billion by 2020, said that while containers have enjoyed a great deal of attention in the enterprise, adoption and revenue are just starting to emerge. 451 Research finds increased movement beyond development and testing to production use.