IBM Cloud Object Storage is an object storage service within IBM Cloud, intended for organisations that need to keep large volumes of unstructured data, backups and archives. It is consumed as a cloud service and offers built-in encryption, role-based access policies and key management. Buckets can be kept within a single region or spread across several regions so that data stays available during an outage. A Backup Vault protects backups from deletion or modification. According to IBM, the service supports a range of compliance frameworks, including ISO 27001, SOC 2 and GDPR.
IBM Corporation is headquartered in Armonk, New York, so the service falls under US jurisdiction, including the CLOUD Act. Customers choose where their data is stored. In Europe, regional options exist in Frankfurt (eu-de), London (eu-gb) and a region in Spain (eu-es), together with an EU cross-region option; there are also locations in the United States, Asia and South America, among others. A European organisation that wants data localisation can therefore select a European region, but still depends on a US provider.