In this blog post I am going to address a very common question about Bluemix services. Quite frequently I am asked if you can use Bluemix services from either an on-premise application hosting environment or from another cloud without actually hosting the application on Bluemix. The answer is yes and I will show you how to quickly do this in Bluemix. As an example I will show you how to create an instance of the Globalization Pipeline service on Bluemix that you can access from any application hosting environment.

The first step is to select the service from the Bluemix catalog and click on “View More”. In this screenshot we are selecting the Globalization Pipeline service.

Bluemix Service Catalog

Once you click “View More” you will be presented with a page to create and bind an instance of the service. To create an unbound instance of the service simply select “Leave unbound” from the App pulldown and then click “Create”.

Unbound Service

After the service is created you will be taken to the service’s dashboard. From the dashboard view you will see a link to the “Service Credentials” from the left navigation. Go ahead and click this link to see the credentials. Now that you have the credentials and service’s URL you can access the service from your application in any hosting environment.

Unbound Service Credentials

That’s it as you can see it is pretty simple to use Bluemix services from any hosting environment.