IBM stayed up late last night to announce a new service called Bluemix Local that lets app builders work across hybrid clouds (public and private clouds plus on-premise data centers).

IBM’s Bluemix development platform was already available on both public and private hosted clouds, but today’s announcement delivers true hybrid cloud app development capabilities, allowing enterprises to build apps in a secure fashion and deploy them across any hybrid environments.

Essentially, what Bluemix Local does is it lets developers write their apps once and then run them anywhere, on any platform. The service is powered by IBM’s new Relay tethering technology which ensures that all cloud environments are kept current by allowing enterprises to move apps from on-premises to the public cloud at the push of a button.

Bluemix Local is the latest solution in IBM’s toolbox as it bids to cater for hybrid cloud deployments, which are rapidly becoming the norm for most enterprises. Bluemix Local sits behind the firewall and uses the backbone of the Bluemix platform-as-a-service app development solution. This allows enterprises to connect their data with APIs in one location.

IBM says it’s targeting heavily regulated industries such as the banking, financial and healthcare sectors, where convoluted data handling and security requirements are the norm.

Other features of Bluemix Local include a catalog of over 100 services that can be leveraged to extend apps and services; a management console for public and private cloud, and on-premise environments; and data syncing across IBM’s global cloud data center infrastructure.

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