Unshackling the cloud

You have just completed a successful Initial Coin Offering (ICO): you have the funds and are now looking to roll out your products and services. But where is the talent?

ARTICLE: Craig Sproule — December 2017 (Issue #4 — iCO CROWD)

You have just completed a successful Initial Coin Offering (ICO): you have the funds and are now looking to roll out your products and services. But where is the talent? Given the fast-rising number of ICO projects underway, new ventures are struggling to find the skilled labor they need to deliver on their promises.

In the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry there is a dearth of experienced developers. Compounding the problem, each developer is building the same app foundations from scratch, with limited reusability across the industry.

Now, let’s say your start-up is happily generating above-the-line revenue and you’re ready to take it to the next stage. What kind of technology should you deploy to run and expand your growing business? These are critical issues faced by enterprises both large and small in new markets such as blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT), as well as traditional markets like healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, mobile and retail. Across all sectors enterprises rely upon apps. Yet the fact remains that there are insufficient, skilled resources to sustain current engineering demand. The need for apps has already outstripping supply.

A lack of developers is one constraint on business growth: another, when it comes to app development and execution, is the requirement for cost effective computing power. Consider for a moment the public cloud whereby enterprises can buy and utilise computing services. These services range from advertising, infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) as examples. This public cloud is capital-intensive and resource-intensive: to compete, a new provider must commit to a significant amount of investment and employ a legion of talent. No wonder, given such high barriers to entry, that the top four public cloud companies control 65% of the market. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the undisputed leader, followed by Microsoft, IBM and Google.

But what is the reality of the public cloud? Free and infinite as it may sound, the cloud relies on global siloes of centralised data storage and processing facilities — a “shackled cloud”. Take a look at the maps of how AWS, Microsoft’s Azure or Google’s Cloud spread their infrastructure and networks around the globe. You will note vast, unlit tracts of distribution — mostly in emerging markets and places that would not provide a return on investment.

Decentralized cloud and apps at 45X the speed

The full potential of device memory and processor capacity — vital for executing apps at speed — remains largely underutilised. Crowd Machine plans to meet the surge in demand for apps and, at the same time, harness globally underutilised computing power through the creation of a Crowd Computer. Planned for release in Q3 2018, it will be a peer-to-peer computational network that pays device owners to participate. Any type of device can be utilized, including mobiles, desktops, data centres and IoT devices, all acting in unison as a global processor. In effect, the Crowd Computer will act as a highly powerful, decentralized cloud, designed to execute blockchain smart contracts and run decentralized apps built in Crowd Machine’s Crowd App Studio, an app creation platform embedded in the network

Crowd App Studio is a zero-code environment where virtually anyone can quickly and easily create apps. Apps can be built on top of any blockchain — Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and more. Apps are constructed and distributed as fragments, otherwise known as ‘Patterns’, which define a desired behaviour. Patterns are themselves composed of Activities, which represent subsets of instructions. By combining Patterns, an app is formed. There is no requirement to understand any form of computer language or the intricacies of app development. Through this new, streamlined approach to app design, developers can create blockchain and decentralized apps at speeds of up to 45X conventional approaches. Additionally, they will be able to share their creations via Crowd Share, a GitHub-like repository which includes a method for Crowd Machine’s community of developers to monetize their work.

The business model of Crowd Machine is relatively simple. Access to the Crowd App Studio and Crowd Share is free, with Crowd Machine customers only pay for use of the Crowd Computer network. As apps are executed, device owners are rewarded through payments in Crowd Machine Tokens (CMT) in proportion to the amount of resources required to execute the app. Community developers who place Patterns or complete apps into Crowd Share, which are then consumed by customers, are also rewarded in CMT when that content is executed.

Market-ready apps

Crowd Machine’s technology, developed by Metavine Labs, has already been battle-tested by many Fortune 500 companies, including General Electric, AON Hewitt, KONE, Anthem and Pacific Western Bank. First versions of the Crowd App Studio and Crowd Virtual Machine (CVMs run on devices and are the basis of Crowd Computer’s peer-to-peer network) were released in 2017.

Crowd Machine, by packaging together scalable computation, file storage, external data, monetization, and payments, provides all the critical pieces of a decentralized app development stack. Crowd Machine’s new approach to decentralized app creation and execution will unshackle the cloud, empower a whole new generation of app developers, and disrupt the dominance of centralized infrastructure companies. So, whether you have just completed your ICO, or whether you are about to expand into new global markets, Crowd Machine provides a mechanism to quickly and cost effectively deliver your goals.

Crowd Machine’s Token Sale is planned for Q1 2018