FREE now SUBSCRIBE Invalid email Make the most of your money by signing up to our newsletter fornow We will use your email address only for sending you newsletters. Please see our Privacy Notice for details of your data protection rights.

The blockchain industry could eventually be worth $7 billion, based on calculations that two percent of corporate servers would run the technology at a cost of $5,500 annually. Analysts have however refrained from putting a time scale on the estimate, as the technology is still to be widely adopted. The technology is well-suited to some of the world’s biggest company, could amalgamate blockchain with existing cloud computing operations and improve supply chain infrastructure, according to BoA research analyst Kash Rangan. "Amazon will benefit from incremental cloud services demand from Blockchain implementation, while improved supply chain tracking should make Amazon's retail operations more efficient," Rangan announced yesterday.

Amazon will benefit from incremental cloud services demand from Blockchain implementation Bank of America research analyst Kash Rangan

Blockchain is the backbone for cryptocurrencies. It shares data on a distributed, secure, and incorruptible digital ledger in a way that "databases have not been able to in the past," Rangan said. America retail giant Walmart is among the first to work on a food safety blockchain solution and recently announced it’s requiring all of its lettuce suppliers to upload their data to the blockchain by September 2019. While it's not being used in many other consumer instances yet, blockchain could improve existing parts of "software as a service" or SaaS.

Blockchain: The technology could become a multi billion-dollar market

Microsoft: The company launched its Ethereum-based Azure cloud computing platform in 2015

Bitcoin: A technician inspects the backside of bitcoin mining

Microsoft's Azure for example, could rely on what Rangan called "blockchain as a service" or "BaaS," on its popular cloud computing platform. "BaaS on Azure offers services such as smart contracts and other third party apps, and should benefit as use of blockchain on Azure increases," Rangan said. BoA also said companies such as Oracle and IBM are set to to benefit from the technology. But as a caveat, the researchers added there remain a range of blockchain estimates and its money-making ability is yet to be proven.