Native Cloud Object Storage (NCOS) extends Netezza’s hybrid storage hierarchy by letting you create tables directly on cloud object storage, so you can tap virtually unlimited capacity while honoring the price/performance expectations your analytics workloads demand.

Storage‑intensive or colder data can live on cost‑efficient object storage, while performance‑sensitive workloads continue to benefit from high‑performance block storage under the same familiar Netezza experience. Existing applications built for block storage can work with object storage without any changes to their code or configuration.

NCOS is engineered to be invisible, handling all the complexity under the hood so your data professionals can focus on analytics, not infrastructure.

The numbers speak for themselves: Storage costs are 5–15x cheaper than block storage.¹

Through advanced techniques like high-performance caching and optimized batch writes, Netezza drastically reduces object storage API costs, which traditional cloud data warehouses struggle with. You get the economics of cloud object storage without the bill shock.

Internal testing across diverse workloads—read-only queries, mixed analytics, write-intensive operations and concurrent multi-user scenarios—shows object storage delivering performance comparable to block storage while consistently lowering your total cost of ownership.

In other words, you’re not trading speed for savings; you’re getting both.

One of the biggest pain points with cloud storage pricing is unpredictability. NCOS solves this with transparent, usage-based billing tied directly to what you actually use: data volume and API calls. No hidden fees. No surprise charges. Just clear, predictable costs that you can forecast and control.

DBAs have granular control too. Use the new storagetype keyword to set storage policies at the table, database, session or global level. Want this table on fast block storage? One command. Ready to archive that year-old data to object storage? Just as simple. As your data grows and access patterns shift, your storage strategy can evolve with it.

Netezza’s single-push migration tool, nz_migrate, makes transitioning from block to object storage fast and straightforward. Combined with zero-code modification and full SQL compatibility, the path to a hybrid storage strategy is smooth and non-disruptive.

NCOS is deeply integrated into the Netezza storage engine, delivering performance that feels local even when your data lives in the cloud. A purpose-built local cache keeps hot data close to compute, while automated lifecycle management cleans up obsolete objects in the background.

With data growth outpacing budgets and cloud mandates accelerating, organizations need a way to cut storage costs and modernize without sacrificing performance or forcing teams to relearn their analytics stack—exactly what NCOS enables.

• Data volumes are growing faster than budgets and finance teams are scrutinizing every terabyte, forcing analytics leaders to find ways to cut storage costs without slowing the business.
• At the same time, CIOs are driving cloud‑first and object‑storage mandates, pushing teams to modernize platforms without risking performance or disrupting critical workloads.
• NCOS gives Netezza customers a practical way to respond to this pressure by offloading storage‑heavy datasets to low‑cost cloud object storage while keeping the same MPP engine, SQL and tools their teams already rely on.
  
  

NCOS is production-ready on both major cloud platforms. Whether you’re looking to reduce storage costs, enable near-unlimited scale or build a more flexible, future-ready analytics platform, the moment to act is here.

Start small: bring selected workloads onto object storage, refine your storage strategy with storagetype, and unlock cloud-ready economics, all while keeping the Netezza database and tools your teams already know and trust.

To explore how NCOS can work with your existing Netezza environment, contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner to get started on a pilot.

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Explore deployment option: Netezza BYOC on AWS   |   Netezza BYOC on Azure