At InterConnect 2015 IBM announced the new Secure Gateway service which is now available on IBM Bluemix.
“When you need a secure way to connect Bluemix applications to remote locations on-premises or in the cloud, use the Secure Gateway service. The Secure Gateway provides secure connectivity and establishes a tunnel between your Bluemix organization and the remote location that you want to connect to.”
The secure gateway is a key part of IBM’s hybrid cloud strategy. For a sample scenario I suggest to watch the keynote “Digital Transformation in the Era of Hybrid Cloud” on InterConnectGo. After you’ve registered you can watch the video on YouTube (4:22m – 10:45m, just append ‘&t=262’ to the URL). The sample is an user experience for flight attendance who can rebook flights during flights if necessary. The sample has a mobile interface, uses Bluemix for hosting the app, Cloudant for mobile data and additionally on-premises systems to access passenger profiles, the flight booking system etc.
In order to use the gateway you need to set up some software on-premises. Right now the only option is to run a Docker image which is as easy as invoking one command assuming you have Docker already installed.
Once done you can expose on-premises URLs to the cloud. The gateway protects these URLs so that only your app(s) can access them. Watch the video to learn how to configure the service.
Here is a screenshot of a quick test:
