IBM Db2 on Cloud is the correct choice because it is an enterprise-grade, fully managed relational database service built on Db2. It is specifically designed for mission-critical workloads, offering high availability configurations, automated backups, and scalability. Its compatibility with on-premises Db2 eases migration and minimizes cutover complexity compared to open-source database services.

IBM Cloud Code Engine is a fully managed, serverless platform where you run your containerized applications. It automatically scales instances up and down to zero based on incoming HTTP requests or events, and you are billed per second of resource consumption. This ‘scale-to-zero’ and pay-per-use model is ideal for handling unpredictable traffic spikes cost-effectively, unlike VPC virtual servers which require manual scaling or persistent pods in Kubernetes.

The Cost and Asset Management tool (formerly Cost Calculator) provides detailed breakdowns of costs by service, resource, and tags. This allows you to identify which specific bucket, and potentially which operations (e.g., excessive API calls, large data egress), are driving the costs. Taking investigative action based on data is the correct professional approach before making any destructive changes or support requests.

IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services is a dedicated key management service (KMS) and Hardware Security Module (HSM) offering. It allows you to create, import, and control the lifecycle of your own encryption keys (BYOK). These customer-managed keys can then be used to encrypt data at rest in services like Block Storage or databases, and to secure communications, fulfilling both at-rest and in-transit encryption requirements under your control.

IBM Cloud Continuous Delivery (which includes the toolchain and Tekton-based pipeline service) is the integrated DevOps service for automating CI/CD workflows. It can be easily triggered by Git webhooks, build code using containers, run tests, and deploy to various IBM Cloud compute targets like Code Engine, Kubernetes, or Cloud Foundry, perfectly matching the described requirement.

This option follows security best practices: it uses a unique user identity (the contractor’s IBMid), applies the principle of least privilege by granting only the ‘Operator’ role (which allows manage but not create/delete), and scopes the access precisely to the required service (VPC Infrastructure) and resource group. This is far more secure and auditable than sharing credentials or granting broad administrative roles.

Watson Machine Learning (WML) is the service responsible for the deployment and management of machine learning models. It can take a model trained in Watson Studio (or elsewhere) and deploy it as a scalable, secure web service (REST API endpoint) with just a few clicks. The other services are for building conversational agents, searching documents, or annotating text, not for model deployment.

IBM Cloud Event Streams is a fully managed Apache Kafka service. Kafka is designed for building real-time, scalable, and durable streaming data pipelines and applications using publish-subscribe messaging. It guarantees message ordering within partitions and is a standard technology for hybrid cloud integration, making it ideal for reliable, ordered messaging between on-prem and cloud.

IBM Cloud Regions are specific geographic locations (like Frankfurt, Germany or London, UK) that host IBM Cloud data centers. When you select a region (e.g., EU-DE) to create a resource, you are ensuring the data and workloads are physically hosted and operated within that geographic jurisdiction, which is the direct mechanism for meeting data residency and sovereignty requirements.

IBM Db2 on Cloud is the correct choice because it is an enterprise-grade, fully managed relational database service built on Db2. It is specifically designed for mission-critical workloads, offering high availability configurations, automated backups, and scalability. Its compatibility with on-premises Db2 eases migration and minimizes cutover complexity compared to open-source database services.0