IBM today announced new cloud services that enable its clients to protect, store and retrieve their critical data in minutes versus days in the event of a disaster.

IBM claims that the new IBM SmartCloud Resilience services allow its customers to protect their data and applications faster, cheaper and in a more flexible manner than they could before within a traditional data center environment.

Historically, companies created numerous images of servers and applications at running at multiple sites, adding to the complexity and cost of IT management. Now, the IBM SmartCloud offers companies of various sizes a virtual and physical server recovery service that continuously replicates their applications and all associated data on a secure cloud infrastructure. This enables them to have their business up and running in minutes after declaring an outage in their IT infrastructure.

By using the IBM cloud, organizations can more easily and cost effectively provide continuous service to their customers and ensure that their data and applications are protected and secure. IBM's cloud allows clients to securely manage and balance workloads, lower application and system downtime, and reduce data loss.

The new services include:

- IBM SmartCloud Virtualized Server Recovery - The server recovery service increases the reliability and efficiency of recovery to help practically eliminate business downtime, and minimize data loss. Provides a portal for remote access to rapidly bring back their business on IBM's recovery infrastructure in case of outage, replicating both server software and associated data continuously; eliminates the issues of recovery on physical non-like hardware and travel to disaster sites.

- IBM SmartCloud Archive - Designed to meet stringent privacy and regulatory compliance, from advanced search and indexing and retrieval, to eDiscovery capabilities. Provides an advanced document and records management system to deal with structured and unstructured content; control over rising data storage costs; and improved availability of critical business content.

The two new services will be available starting July 19 in certain markets, IBM said.