Dive Brief:

• IBM Cloud Mass Data Migration, a portable storage device offering a 120TB capacity for companies to securely and physically transfer large amounts of data into the IBM Cloud, was released Tuesday, according to a company announcement.

• The data migration program will allow companies to transition data to the cloud within a matter of days and boasts a 20% larger storage capacity than competitors' physical transfer services, according to IBM.

• For companies without access to high-speed internet, the transfer service may prove especially useful, according to IBM. The tool can help transfer large image, audio or video files while opening up space in on-premise storage.

Dive Insight:

IBM's data migration program stands to compete with AWS' Snowball and Google Transfer Appliance, other portable hardware units capable of transferring up to 10 TB to AWS Cloud and 100 TB or 480 TB to the Google Cloud Platform. AWS also offers Snowmobile, a secure data truck capable of transferring 100 PB of data. 

This is not IBM's first effort to ease cloud migration for customers. Last week the company announced a hybrid cloud approach under its partnership with VMware.

For most companies, moving large amounts of data like those required for analytics applications is too burdensome to do virtually. But as more companies move their infrastructure to the cloud, avenues for transferring vast quantities of data are essential.

Data migration services are necessary for cloud providers to remain competitive and attract businesses still looking to move to the cloud.