We will speak today about the challenges that come with implementing innovative technologies such as blockchain in today’s businesses. Spoiler alert: we’re here to help.
As information technology and computer science innovations ride their hype cycles, the challenges for CIOs are multiple. How do you assess the maturity of technologies? How do you identify the winning horses in emerging spaces? How do you educate your teams on cutting-edge technologies? We can frame the question around two main points:
- What is the right time to adopt new technology?
- How to select partners for new technologies?
The case of blockchain is particularly interesting. 11 years after Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin whitepaper, the blockchain space has greatly matured. From its crypto-currency beginnings, onwards to smart-contracts, some estimates place its market size for 2019 at $5 Billion. Here is how growwire.com puts it:
Shell, for example, is working with technology and finance partners on a platform for the trade and settlement of crude oil. Walmart used blockchain to create a food traceability system, insurance giant AXA now offers flight insurance via blockchain technology, and Facebook is using blockchain to build a cryptocurrency, Libra, which will allow users to buy and sell products from participating merchants and send payments across its platform. […] In Deloitte’s 2019 Global Blockchain Survey, 53 percent of respondents — 1,300 senior executives across a dozen countries — said blockchain had become a critical priority and 83 percent saw compelling use cases for the technology.
The promises of the technology are so enormous that it is a daunting task for a CIO to identify areas where blockchain will bring tangible and fast returns on investment. In some respects, it feels like the early days of the internet. In 2019, businesses require a website, social media presence, B2C/B2B platforms to engage customers, portals for its business partners, with all of this running in a cloud infrastructure. While it seems obvious today, it really wasn’t 10 or 15 years ago. So the question is, what will be the blockchain-powered ‘obvious must-haves’ for businesses in 2030?
One thing is for sure, people are hard at work figuring this out, as our team saw at the Devcon 5 #ethereum conference in Osaka in October. What’s important is how the ecosystem has matured, here’s a quick recap of what’s possible with #ethereum today:
- Deploy a private blockchain for free in 5 minutes with Kaleido
- Make confidential transactions on #ethereum with Hyperledger Besu
- #tokenize your assets and build marketplaces with ConsenSys Codefi
- Join business consortiums like Komgo
Why this focus on the ethereum blockchain? In many ways, ethereum has won this battle of the enterprise blockchain wars. Let’s start by looking at the state of enterprise blockchain as of October 2019.
What’s important is that the ‘core’ blockchain infrastructure, typically represents a rather small portion of the overall effort in delivering a complete blockchain solution. Just like most of the work on an e-commerce website is NOT on working with a TCP/IP stack, most of the work on a blockchain platform is NOT on setting up consensus algorithms. What makes the strength of #ethereum as a development platform is the ecosystem of tools, companies, and other open-source libraries that can be used.
This does not necessarily mean that tying everything together, and developing business or use-cases specific applications is easy however. Just like companies implement AI, big data or ERP projects with partners and system integrators, we are convinced at www.atato.com that a blockchain service provider is a key enabler for the technology.
At www.atato.com our mission is to build the next-generation infrastructure for innovative companies. To achieve this, we deliver tailor-made platforms for each client. We are combining existing products from various companies to create specialized blockchain platforms intended to answer our client’s needs.
And to achieve this, we work like any software company you’ve worked with:
- Training and advising the technology and business teams
- Defining a clear business level roadmap with milestones
- Building a tailor-made platform using an existing stack of technologies
- Delivering our platform into production
We applied this model with all our clients whether it is for a financial platform for new asset offerings, a new energy trading platform for electric vehicles or a food traceability application.
If 2018 was still the year of ICO’s, 2019 the year of development, 2020 will be the year that defines the future of blockchain for enterprises with the first large scale implementations of blockchain technology led by service providers.
We’d love to learn more about where you see your business going, with the new possibilities enabled by blockchain. Get in touch! [email protected].
