IBM launches Object Storage service on Bluemix, 10 years after AWS launched S3

IBM today announced the beta availability of Object Storage, a new storage service on its Bluemix cloud.

The release definitely has a late feel to it, considering that the market leader in the public cloud business, Amazon Web Services, announced a comparable service nearly 10 years ago — in March 2006.

Not that IBM had nothing in the way of object storage in its vast portfolio. The SoftLayer public cloud that IBM acquired in 2013 does offer object storage. As part of Bluemix, the new service uses SoftLayer, but the SoftLayer object storage service remains available separately.

The new service is based on the OpenStack open-source cloud software, according to a statement. It’s targeted at individual developers, an IBM spokesperson told VentureBeat.

However things play out with the two object storage services, it’s clear once again today that IBM wants to challenge AWS, as well as the Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure, in the general-purpose cloud infrastructure business. Otherwise this service would not have been launched. In that business, attacks can come in the form of price cuts, feature releases, and geographic expansion.

Companies like Dell and HP, which IBM long competed with in the server market until selling the x86 server business to Lenovo, have both given up in the general Amazon-style cloud infrastructure market. Both Dell and HP have sought to partner with Microsoft around hybrid cloud.

It’s unclear exactly how one can compare IBM’s public cloud revenue with that of Amazon, Microsoft, or Google. The best thing we have from IBM is revenue run rate. For the year that ended on September 30, IBM had $4.5 billion in revenue run rate for cloud “as a service,” up year over year from $3.1 billion, according to the latest IBM earnings statement.