Comparison between Cloud Pak for Data as a Service and Cloud Pak for Data 4.0

Cloud Pak for Data as a Service is a set of IBM Cloud services. Other deployments of Cloud Pak for Data are offered as software that you must install and maintain. For example, you can install Cloud Pak for Data 4.0 on your own on-premises hardware, on IBM Cloud, or on other cloud platforms.

Cloud Pak for Data as a Service differs from Cloud Pak for Data 4.0 in the following key ways:

Software installation and maintenance You don't install or maintain the software for Cloud Pak for Data as a Service. Cloud Pak for Data as a Service is fully managed by IBM on IBM Cloud.

Storage You don't provide file storage system on a Red Hat OpenShift cluster for Cloud Pak for Data as a Service. Your storage resources are provided by IBM Cloud services and defined by your service plans.

Security, compliance, and isolation The data security, network security, security standards compliance, and isolation of Cloud Pak for Data as a Service is managed by IBM Cloud. See Security of Cloud Pak for Data as a Service.

Cost You can use Cloud Pak for Data as a Service for free if you provision only Lite plans of your services. However, not all services have Lite plans and most Lite plans have limitations on functionality and resource usage. You can upgrade each service individually to the offering plan that you need. See Offering plans.

User management You add users and manage their account roles and permissions with IBM Cloud IAM. You can also set up SAML federation on IBM Cloud. See IBM Cloud docs: What is IBM Cloud Identity and Access Management?

Services The services catalog in Cloud Pak for Data as a Service contains IBM Cloud services. The list of services for Cloud Pak for Data as a Service has some differences from the list of services for Cloud Pak for Data 4.0.

The core services of Watson Studio, Watson Machine Learning, Watson OpenScale, and Watson Knowledge Catalog are included in both deployment environments, but they have some feature differences. See Feature differences in core services between deployment environments.

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Parent topic: Cloud Pak for Data as a Service