We have a lot of exciting developments going on behind the scenes at LaserProtocol…

And today we’re excited to finally announce a major collaboration between Laser and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

Our hard work is paying off.

HPE is a household name that’s ranked #1 in servers, #2 in networking, and #2 in total storage globally.

HPE provides businesses with secure, cloud-enabled and mobile-friendly IT infrastructures.

They’ve chosen to work with Global Blockchain in building a proof-of-concept enterprise-grade shared computing application on top of Laser.

The Move from Centralized Storage to Decentralized Storage

Markets & Markets reports that the centralized storage market is expected to grow to be a $88.9 billion market by 2022.

Today, it’s dominated by companies like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Dropbox and others.

But decentralization of these commodity services is coming, just as decentralization came to taxis with Uber, and hotels with AirBnB. Now, Laser is at the forefront of this transition.

How? Laser’s blockchain underpins the proof-of-concept network, and provides a missing economic incentive… Photon tokens… to market participants.

Here’s how that works…

Introducing the Stratus Marketplace

The proof-of-concept application we’re collaborating on, called the Stratus Marketplace, will create a blockchain-based market for cloud computing resources.

The simplest way to describe this proof-of-concept marketplace is to think of it as “AirBnB for storage”.

But instead of matching house owners with house renters… we will use the blockchain to match up storage owners with storage renters.

In short, on this new marketplace, any enterprise customers can “buy” or “sell” storage space using Laser’s native cryptocurrency, called Photons.

Why Laser?

We think the Laser blockchain is perfectly suited for this application.

Cloud computing services need four things to be successful; network integrity, disaster recoverability, efficiency, and security.

First, Laser provides network integrity by requiring marketplace participants to put up collateral (Photon tokens) to run servicenodes. These servicenodes run the software that keeps the Stratus network in order.

If a participant doesn’t follow the service agreement, these “bad actors” can be penalized and lose their collateral.

Second, using Laser, the disaster recovery process is trivial. Laser’s blockchain allows data to be replicated, repatriated, or recovered at any point in time with zero restrictions.

Third, Laser removes inefficiencies of centralized systems. By removing unnecessary “middlemen” who are essentially just toll collectors, decentralization allows enterprise buyers and sellers to transact directly and efficiently.

Fourth, unlike a centralized database where an entire data storage facility is in one place, data on a blockchain is securely encrypted in unhackable slices across the entire blockchain network.

We’ve targeted our release date to be in late Q3 of 2018.

In the meantime, be sure to follow our Twitter account for the latest news… including updates on our historic collaboration with HPE.