Setting up the IBM Cloud account

As an IBM Cloud account owner or administrator, you sign up for IBM watsonx and set up payment for services in the IBM Cloud account.

These steps describe the typical tasks for an IBM Cloud account owner to set up the account for an organization:

  1. Sign up for the Data Fabric experience.
  2. Update your IBM Cloud account to add or update billing information.
  3. (Optional) Configure restrictions for the account.

Step 1: Sign up for the Data Fabric experience

You can sign up for a free version of IBM watsonx.data intelligence or IBM watsonx.data integration and provision the Trial plan.

Sign up for the Data Fabric experience and provision the service:

  1. Go to Try IBM watsonx - Data Fabric.
  2. Select the service region. Watsonx.data integration is not available in all regions. See Regional availability.
  3. Agree to the terms, Data Use Policy, and Cookie Use.
  4. Log in with your IBMid (usually an email address) if you have an existing IBM Cloud account. If you don't have an IBM Cloud account, click Create an IBM Cloud account to create a new account.
  5. After IBM watsonx finishes provisioning, open up the dashboard by clicking Go to IBM watsonx.

With a Trial account, you can try out watsonx.data intelligence or watsonx.data integration with limited compute resources and functionality. To access the full functionality, upgrade to a billable account and then upgrade the services to an appropriate plan.

You can skip this step if your IBM Cloud account has billing information with a Pay-As-You-Go plan.

You must update your IBM Cloud account in the following circumstances:

Pay-As-You-Go accounts

You set up a Pay-As-You-Go by adding a credit card number and billing information. You pay only for billable services that you use, with no long-term contracts or commitments. You can provision paid plans for all services in the IBM Cloud services catalog, including plans in the watsonx.data intelligence services catalog.

To set up a Pay-As-You-Go account:

  1. Log in to IBM watsonx and click Upgrade in the header or choose Administration > Account and billing > Upgrade service plans from the main menu.
  2. On the Upgrade service plans page, click Enter credit card information in the Pay-As-You-Go section.
  3. Enter the information about your account, including your payment information.
  4. Click Create account to submit your information.

After your payment information is processed, your account is upgraded and you can access the full IBM Cloud catalog, including watsonx.data intelligence services. You receive a monthly invoice for billable resource usage or instance fees.

Step 3: (Optional) Configure security restrictions for the account

You can restrict access to specific IP addresses to protect the IBM Cloud account from unwanted access from unknown IP addresses. See Allow specific IP addresses.

Next steps