IBM has revealed that the standard tier BlueMix Lift service is now free. Which sounds great save for one small problem: the service was just about free already.

BlueMix lift is a database migration service that Big Blue says “makes it easy to quickly, securely and reliably migrate your database from on-premises data centers to an IBM Bluemix cloud data property … with zero downtime.” That’s possible because IBM’s Aspera file transfer tech can monitor changes to the source database and make sure they’re captured on the cloudy side of the house.

Which sounds pretty handy because downtime is bad and cloud has may benefits.

But was we mentioned at the top of this story, BlueMix Lift standard tier was already cheap as: the product’s pricing page says shifting the first 100GB of data was free and thereafter cost US$0.02 per gigabyte. Let’s do the math: if you uploaded another 100GB after the free allowance that would be 100 times two cents … or two dollars!

Which may not make a huge difference to those of you considering a move to the cloud.

It is possible to export data from BlueMix, but The Register is always pleased to hear recitations of the The Eagles’ Hotel California – “You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave” – when discussing cloud computing. Which is our way of pointing out that the savings on offer could be expensive in the long run.

BlueMix Lift’s enterprise tier offers unlimited inbound data per target database at $430. ®