FOOTPRINT : Lightweight “XS T-shirt” deployment for IKC (CP4D) – extendable to wx.data intelligence

Customers are increasingly asking for a significantly smaller footprint option for IBM Knowledge Catalog (IKC). Current deployments require substantial resources, even in development or POC environments where workloads are limited and only a small subset of features is typically used.

Introducing a lightweight deployment option would:

Simplify adoption 
Reduce infrastructure requirements.

This aligns with customer demand for lightweight POCs and developer-friendly editions, while also ensuring that Cloud Pak for Data (CP4D) remains competitive to other competitors that have already this option.
Since wx.data intelligence relies on the same IKC foundation, addressing this requirement at the IKC level will positively impact both CP4D overall and the wx.data intelligence bundle

Proposal (the IDEA)

• Introduce a new “XS T-shirt” deployment profile for IKC within CP4D:
• Remove or disable non-essential infrastructure components that are not critical in dev/test scenarios. (infra node for example)
• Optimize startup and provisioning time for faster environment setup.
• Clearly communicate any performance trade-offs (acceptable for dev/POC, not recommended for production).

Expected Benefits

• Easier Adoption
• Smaller footprint for development and POC environments.
• Faster and cheaper provisioning of dev/test environments.
• Reduced infrastructure costs for customers.

Stronger competitive position, as other vendors already offer lightweight developer editions.

References

CPIDEAS-I-2940
CPPLATFORM-I-2
CPDIDEAS-I-438
CPDIDEAS-I-293
CPDIDEAS-I-955
CPDIDEAS-I-420