Switching the experience for a space

Last updated: May 30, 2025

You can switch the experience for some spaces between the Cloud Pak for Data as a Service and the watsonx experiences. When you switch a space to another experience, you can use the tools that are specific to that experience.

For example, you might switch an existing space from Cloud Pak for Data as a Service to watsonx to consolidate your collaborative work on one experience. See Comparison between watsonx and Cloud Pak for Data as a Service.

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Requirements
Restrictions
What happens when you switch a space
Switch the experience for a space

Requirements

You can switch a space from one experience to the other if you have the required accounts and permissions.

Required accounts

You must be signed up for both Cloud Pak for Data as a Service and watsonx.

Required permissions

You must have the Admin role in the space that you want to switch.

Required services

The current account that you are working in must have both of these services provisioned:

watsonx.ai Studio

watsonx.ai Runtime

Restrictions

To switch a space from Cloud Pak for Data as a Service to watsonx, all the assets in the space must be supported by both platforms.

Spaces that contain any of the following asset types, but no other types of assets, are eligible to switch from Cloud Pak for Data as a Service to watsonx:

Connected data asset
Connection
Data asset from a file
Deployment
Jupyter notebook
Model
Python function
Script

You can’t switch a space that contains assets that are specific to Cloud Pak for Data as a Service. If you add any assets that you created with services other than watsonx.ai Studio and watsonx.ai Runtime to a project, you can't switch that space to watsonx. Although Pipelines assets are supported in both Cloud Pak for Data as a Service and watsonx spaces, you can't switch a space that contains pipeline assets because pipelines can reference unsupported assets.

For more information about asset types, see Asset types and properties.

What happens when you switch the experience for a space

Switching a space between experiences has the following effects:

Collaborators: Collaborators in the project receive notifications of the switch on the original experience. If any collaborators do not have accounts for the destination experience, those collaborators can no longer access the project.
Jobs: Scheduled jobs are retained. Any jobs that are running at the time of the switch continue until completion on the original experience. Any jobs that are scheduled for times after the switch are run on the destination experience. Job history is not retained.
Environments: Custom hardware and software specifications are retained.
Space history: Recent activity and asset activities are not retained.
Resource usage: Resource usage is cumulative because you continue to use the same service instances.
Storage: The space's IBM Cloud Object Storage bucket remains the same.

Switch the experience for a space

You can switch the experience for a space from within the space on the original experience. You can switch between Cloud Pak for Data as a Service and watsonx.

To switch the experience for a space:

From the space you want to switch, open the Manage tab, select the General page, and in the Controls section, click Switch platform. If you don't see a Switch platform button or the button is not active, you can't switch the space.
Select the destination experience and click Switch platform.