Blockchain is rapidly rising up the enterprise priority stack, though as we noted recently, it’s still got a way to go before it’s widely deployed in business.

Some longtime information technology industry observers predict that blockchain digital ledger will totally disrupt business as we know it within a few years. More blockchain pilots are making the transition to full production, especially for financial, supply chain and business-to-business applications.

Startups are also pouring into the blockchain market, which speaks to the pace of innovation in this arena but also to the degree of immaturity. Today’s blockchain startups will need to show that they have staying power and can ride a “land-and-expand” strategy to greater success. Leading startups in blockchain software and tooling for broad enterprise deployments include BigchainDB GmbH, Blockstream Inc., Bluzelle Networks Pte Ltd., Context Labs, Digital Asset Holdings LLC, Guardtime and Symbiont.io Inc.

However, none of these startups has established itself as the pacesetter in this arena in the way that, say, Cloudera Inc. did for the Hadoop software for big data and Databricks Inc. did for the streaming data software Spark. Just as with the Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, TensorFlow and other growth segments, it will take a few years before enterprises know which of the hot startups will survive and how their incumbent platform providers will incorporate this new technology into their solution portfolios.

In part because of this immaturity and the lack of a blockchain killer app in the general business market, many C-level executives are keeping their distance from this technology for the time being.

Wikibon believes that to be considered mature enough for broad enterprise deployment, a commercial blockchain platform would need to meet the following criteria:

• Blockchain solutions should be general-purpose in their ability to be deployed into a wide range of industries, business functions and other application domains.
• They should be deployable into private clouds, public clouds and various multicloud deployments of a hybrid, B2B and community-wide nature.
• They should be able integrate seamless with enterprise investments in other data, transaction, security and other platforms.
• They should be standardized within a dominant open-source community with wide representation.

According to these criteria, it’s doubtful whether we can regard industry blockchain consortia as providing enterprise-grade platforms. Though some industry observers describe them as such, many of them — most notably, Ethereum Project, Quorum, R3 Corda and Ripple — are focused on financial and cryptocurrency applications running in public or community clouds.

Of the principal blockchain projects, only the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Fabric is likely to become the standardized foundation for truly enterprise-grade open-source blockchains. Contributed by IBM Corp. and Digital Asset, Hyperledger, now in version 1.0, boasts more than 185 collaborating enterprises across finance, banking, the “internet of things,” supply chain, manufacturing and technology.

Let’s sort through the recent blockchain-related platform and tooling announcements from established enterprise IT solution providers. Wikibon is seeing increasing activity from major vendors — especially Amazon Web Services Inc., IBM, Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. — to bring blockchain platforms, tools and applications into their core solution portfolios for robust multicloud deployments.

Amazon Web Services

AWS recently launched new preset templates for rapid creation, deployment and securing blockchains in the AWS cloud. Accessible through this get-started page, these templates make it easier for developers to create blockchains on either of two blockchain versions: Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric.

AWS’s templates create peer-to-peer blockchains in which each participant has access to a shared ledger where the immutable, independently verifiable transactions are recorded. Users can leverage managed, certified AWS CloudFormation templates to automate the deployment of Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric frameworks as well as additional required components. The blockchains may be deployed on Amazon Elastic Container Service or ECS clusters, or directly on an EC2 instance running Docker. Blockchains are created in the user’s own Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, allowing use of their PC subnets and network Access Control Lists.

Users of AWS-hosted blockchains can assign granular permissions using AWS Identity and Access Management to restrict which resources an ECS cluster or EC2 instance can access. The blockchain templates are free of additional charge to AWS customers, though they must still pay for the AWS resources needed to run their blockchains on AWS. They can create and deploy blockchain networks in any public AWS region, as discussed here.

IBM

IBM recently launched its Blockchain Platform, which offers the capability as a software-as-a-service on its public cloud service. As described in this IBM whitepaper, the service runs on the open-source Hyperledger blockchain version from the Linux Foundation. It includes intuitive tooling that helps IBM Cloud subscribers to accelerate development and operationalization of a distributed, scalable and high-performance blockchain.

Leveraging IBM’s extensive experience helping customers deploy blockchain, the service enables developers to build and optimize cloud-based blockchains for pilot evaluations, preproduction proofs of concepts or secure production environments, as discussed here. Developers use Integrated Hyperledger Composer to turn business concepts into application code optimized for running on the deployed blockchain.

Policy-based governance tools simplify network activation and management tasks across distributed blockchains. IBM Cloud’s always-on operations enable 24×7, no-downtime updates to blockchain applications. IBM provides tools for users to easily migrate from blockchain proofs-of-concept all the way through to production on a secure, high-performance and fully scalable networks in IBM Cloud. IBM provides a visual tool for users to manage blockchain administration and governance, iterative development and basic service levels. Under an Enterprise Plan, IBM Cloud offers a secure environment and advanced service levels for production-grade deployment, application development and testing.

Microsoft

This week, Microsoft announced the public preview of Azure Blockchain Workbench at its Build conference. Available in the Azure Marketplace, Workbench is a low-code development tool that enables developers to create, refine and deploy blockchain apps rapidly with minimal coding. The tool has the following core features:

• Provisions an end-to-end blockchain, infrastructure and application on Azure with a few clicks;
• Integrates the blockchain with all the Azure services needed to build a functioning application;
• Associates blockchain identities with federated identity systems through Azure Active Directory for single sign-on, and for simplified identity management throughout a B2B blockchain consortium;
• Stores secrets and keys securely with Azure Key Vault;
• Ingests and manages the events required to trigger smart contracts using Service Bus and Event Grid;
• Provides signing, hashing and routing tools to transform messages into the format expected by the blockchain’s native application programming interface;
• Synchronizes on-chain data with off-chain storage and databases to query attestations and visualize ledger activity more easily;
• Leverages Microsoft Flow and Logic Apps to enable easy integration of blockchain workflows with existing systems;
• Includes blockchain templates for fast application development and customization;
• Extends blockchain capabilities with a REST-based API for client development and a message-based API for system-to-system integration.

Oracle

Oracle unveiled its open-source blockchain platform-as-a-service offering last fall at its OpenWorld conference. Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service is a comprehensive cloud platform for building, deploying, integrating, updating, querying, transacting, securing, scaling, administering and monitoring blockchains.

The service includes client-side software development kits for enrolling blockchain members, adding peer nodes, creating channels, deploying smart contracts, registering for events, running transactions and querying ledger data using Java and Node.js. It provides REST APIs for integrating with other systems via Oracle Integration Cloud, Oracle Digital Innovation Platform and NetSuite SuiteCloud Platform. Developers can build new blockchain transactional applications in Oracle Java, Application Container, Mobile, Application Builder, Integration or SOA Cloud Services.

Provisioning an Oracle blockchain instance spins up a production-ready platform including all required infrastructure services and embedded resources, including compute, containers, storage, identity management and event streaming. Built on Hyperledger Fabric, Oracle’s service takes the features of that open-source platform and adds security, confidential permissions and transactional processing capabilities for building enterprise-grade blockchain applications.

For a broad blockchain industry perspective, here’s Joel Horwitz, vice president of digital partnerships & offerings at IBM, speaking recently at CDO Summit 2018 with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio:

Image: Sérgio Rola