Network Operating System (nOS), developed by Trace Labs, is a gateway to creating value-focused network applications utilising the OriginTrail Decentralised Network (ODN), Ethereum, and Hyperledger, but also legacy systems like ERPs, WMS, and SCM tools. To create a relevant business use case, combining the best of both worlds is necessary. Expensive “rip-and-replace” approaches or dangerous “vendor lock-in” strategies are to be avoided.

Building to Solve Users’ Needs

Old habits die hard. The enterprise sector has been traditionally used to closing themselves off, shielding every bit of information and focusing solely on achieving the organisational optimum. Some companies went to the extreme: Confectionery giant Mars Inc., for example, led even their contractors through factories blindfolded. Coca-Cola’s recipe is a legendary secret.

However, things are changing. Even the old giants are opening up. More open data exchange, ultimately leading to mass decentralization, is a part of it. In the always-connected, transparent world where information travels at the speed of light, the old way of doing things is not sustainable anymore. This new world comes with a whole other set of challenges: Which information is to be trusted? How do we shield against misinformation, false data, fake news, etc.?

New concepts, such as co-opetition, are arising. As we outlined in the OriginTrail Vision Paper, the game is no longer about optimizing one organization and its processes, it’s about adapting your organization for the optimum of the network (community) within which it operates. This, however, requires new levels of inter-connectivity and integrity among partners in such networks.

New Times Call for a New Approach

The winners in the new economy will not be the ones solely copying what had worked up until now. The future is even more complex and requires us to operate with a wider set of trusted information to deliver more value to customers. Enterprises need to work towards the network optimum, and decentralized data exchange helps them get there.

However, it takes more than just setting your mind to it to make this happen. We were fortunate enough in recent years to work with several organisations — from different industries — that have started making bold steps in pursuing such a way of thinking. In many cases, though, companies are facing several inhibititors to transitioning towards the public context:

Internal Policies: Some enterprise/government environments are required to follow very strict policies regarding data storage, often as strict as the “on-premise” requirement.

Regulatory Framework: Certain information is prohibited from being exposed in a certain context by regulators directly. One such example is the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), preventing certain datasets from being stored outside the EU.

Sensitive Information: There may be a business consideration regarding the sharing of data that pertains only to a small number of business partners (sometimes only two) and there is no business logic to putting it on a decentralised network.

It is due to a complex business reality that simplifying the debate about sharing data in a public or private context is not enough. As the World Economic Forum’s white paper (co-authored by the OriginTrail founders) suggests, it is important that the industry moves past the public-versus-private debate to one focused more keenly on deploying solutions where enterprise-specific requirements can be met. This requires a flexible way of providing integrity based data exchanges.

nOS — A Gateway for Business Adoption of the OriginTrail Decentralised Network

To help enterprises tackle these challenges and provide them quick entry into the decentralized future, Trace Labs has created nOS — Network Operating System. Blockchain-based systems should come in as an additional layer, avoiding the expensive rip-and-replace of existing IT and ERP systems. nOS is designed to easily connect with legacy systems and create interoperability for data exchanges between them (for further reading on importance of standards see this GS1 yellow paper) . With the aforementioned built-in flexibility, such data exchanges can easily transition between different levels of data integrity — anything from the lower-integrity private consortium exchange to the max-integrity of OriginTrail Decentralised Network (ODN).

Sharing something on a public decentralised infrastructure, like ODN, does come with the complexity of handling crypto-currencies (TRAC, ETH). From experience in the field, this has shown to be one of the key blockers for enterprises when it comes to adopting blockchain-based solution. With nOS, companies use a credit system where pricing is always presented in USD, a transparent and understandable process that they can also easily handle in the books.