Mass data giant Thomson Reuters, the parent company of multinational news agency Reuters, has released a new tool called ‘Blockone IQ’ to enable clients to plug into its market data with their blockchain systems.

Dubbed ‘BlockOne IQ’, the tool was released in its beta phase on Wednesday to its clients who use Thomson Reuters data on trading platforms using smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain and R3’s Corda ‘distributed ledger platform’. Thomson Reuters provides its data and software to Wall Street clients who use the mass media organization to gather data, news and other information.

Sam Chadwick, Thomson Reuters’ director of strategy in innovation and blockchain, revealed that the aim of BlockOne IQ was to hasten the deployment of blockchain technology in financial markets, by enabling its data to be accessible to blockchain systems.

As quoted by Reuters, Chadwick stated:

A lot of the financial use-cases rely quite heavily on knowing and including real-world data, but there is really no way to do it.

According to the executive, blockchain technology hasn’t been implemented on an industry scale – despite the millions invested in research and development – partly because of the lack of compatibility with other systems.

Notably, Thomson Reuters became a member of the global banking blockchain consortium led by R3 in 2016. At the time, R3 had already developed its blockchain software Corda, which is now open-source. “The opportunities afforded by this emerging technology are enormously exciting for us and our customers,” stated customer solutions manager Mark Rodrigues at the time. In joining R3, the firm became the first major data and technology provider to join what is arguably the world’s leading banking-focused blockchain consortium.

Less than a year later, the data and media giant has now opened up its data to blockchain platforms, providing a boost to adoption of the decentralized innovation while taking a proactive lead from its competitors like Bloomberg LP.

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