Microsoft ()

More and more companies are looking to tap into blockchain technology. Gartner states that between 2015 and 2016, the number of its client enquiries on blockchain grew by more than 600%. By February 2017, ‘blockchain’ was the second-most searched word on its portal.

While the number of enterprises keen to incorporate blockchain into their systems is increasing, there are only a few companies working towards developing blockchain's enterprise readiness. Microsoft (MSFT) is one of them.

Microsoft’s blockchain journey began back in November 2015, with the announcement of its partnership with ConsenSys to “offer Blockchain as a Service (EBaaS) on Microsoft Azure so Enterprise clients and developers can have a single click cloud based blockchain developer environment.”

Microsoft’s vision is to “help companies thrive in this era of secure multi-party computation, delivering open, scalable platforms and services that any company, from ledger startups to governments, health organizations to global banks, can use to create new value.”

Since then, Microsoft has made spectacular progress—expanding partnerships and providing solutions. Here's a look at some of the work they've done.

Azure Offerings

In early 2017, Microsoft became the first public cloud to support a multi-network consortium of blockchain networks on Azure. This enabled Azure to cater to a private networks deployed across its regions, subscriptions and Active Directory (Azure AD) tenants.

Estimates from its customers and partners indicate that developing a blockchain Proof of Concepts (PoC) can take 8-12 weeks and cost as much as $300,000. As a result, Microsoft identified the common challenges related to PoC development and created a “Proof of Concept Framework” that would dramatically reduce the time taken to build a blockchain PoC.

In another step to bringing blockchain to the enterprise, Microsoft unveiled the Coco Framework in August 2017. Coco Framework reduces the complexities involved in the development techniques while offering high-transaction speed (more than 1600 transactions per second), distributed governance and confidentiality—much needed ingredients for successful commercial adoption of blockchain.

Partnerships: A Glimpse

In June, Accenture, Microsoft and Avanade announced the development of an identity prototype based on blockchain technology—a solution to support the goal of ID2020 by “making digital identity a reality”. It is estimated that about one-sixth of the worldwide population is deprived of the cultural, economic, political and social life due to the lack of documented proof of their existence.

This was followed by its collaboration with Tierion for a service that generates, manages, and validates attestations. Tierion is one of the organizations that is part of Microsoft’s “decentralized identity initiative.” Mojix partnered with Microsoft to enable blockchain-powered smart contracts—driving the next wave of innovation across supply chains.

Microsoft has received appreciation for its work— as it made it to the Innovators 2017 - Trade Finance by Global Finance for a project initiated with the Bank of America Merrill Lynch for blockchain-powered transformation of trade finance.

Microsoft Azure was chosen to provide BaaS to support BankChain—a platform for 20 banks (including, State Bank of India, ICICI Bank) in India to explore, build, and implement blockchain solutions.

Meanwhile, Utilidex is working with Microsoft UK to test the technology’s application in buying and selling energy—a fairy new area for the use of blockchain.

The Azure ecosystem was joined by Syscoin and its parent company, Blockchain Foundry, and by the Waves Platform—a decentralized platform for crowdfunding and creation of digital tokens this year.

Microsoft became a launch partner of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA) in February. The company has been supporting Ethereum blockchain since the beginning and over time it has extended support to a number of distributed ledger protocols, including HyperLedger Fabric, R3 Corda, Quorum (EEA), Chain Core, and BlockApps.

Scope

Driven by increasing focus of organizations on transparency, immutability, and scalability, the global blockchain market is projected (October 2016) to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 61.5% to touch $2.31 billion by 2021 from $210.2 million in 2016. An estimate (December 2016) suggests that global blockchain technology market is expected to reach $7.74 billion by 2024.

If both these estimates turn out right, it would mean that the market size would more than triple from 2021 to 2024 signaling acceleration in processes and adoption.

Microsoft is working to bridge the gap between blockchain technology and its enterprise deployment on Azure. One of its key areas of focus remains middleware integrations “to make ledgers more approachable for developers and enterprise end users.” Overall, Microsoft’s efforts are directed to ensure that Azure is the preferred way to connect blockchain with the real world.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.