watsonx.data

Watsonx.data is a data store from IBM optimized for governed data and AI workloads, supported by querying, governance, and open data formats to access and share data. Watsonx.data is designed to scale analytics and AI for enterprises using a data lakehouse architecture, offering the flexibility of a data lake with the high performance and structure of a data warehouse. Watsonx.data is part of watsonx, an AI and data platform for enterprise, announced by IBM on May 9, 2023. As well as watsonx.data, the platform includes watsonx.ai, an AI studio for foundation models, generative AI, and machine learning, and watsonx.governance, a toolkit for responsible, transparent, and explainable AI workflows. IBM expects watsonx.data to be generally available in July 2023.

Watsonx.data allows users to access data through a single point of entry with a shared metadata layer across clouds and on-premises environments. The data store provides analytics environments with built-in governance, security, and automation. IBM claims watsonx.data could reduce the cost of a data warehouse by up to 50% by optimizing workloads across multiple query engines and storage tiers and pairing workloads with the right engine. Watsonx.data's lakehouse offering uses object storage and Apache Iceberg. It is assumed to utilize IBM's object storage, which it obtained through the 2015 acquisition of Cleversafe.