Many heavyweight players are beginning to test the waters of blockchain technology. One of the industry’s largest software and services provider, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has also joined the list of blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) providers, which already has the likes of IBM, Microsoft, HP, SAP, and Oracle. Amazon’s launch of BaaS would allow their customers try out this new distributed ledger technology, without the risks or capital costs associated with in-house deployment. Additionally, this move will allow the company address the urgent need for in-house blockchain developers, who are in hot demand, but short supply.
Although Amazon’s BaaS may appear like just another product in the AWS arsenal, the adoption of their new service may lead to new doors in blockchain adoption. According to the chief research officer of G2 Crowd, a b2b software review site, Michael Fauscette, "The use case ideas are really exploding around blockchain in a way that will drive in a wave of adoption that will happen faster than others."
Earlier in the month of June, blockchain incubator, ConsenSys announced the launch of a new blockchain business cloud service targeted at enterprises, called Kaleido. Amazon has partnered with Kaleido to offer its BaaS, hosting an open-source blockchain platform. As already stated, Kaleido allows companies deploy and operate blockchain networks on AWS without worrying on the time and money involved in writing codes. According to founder of ConsenSys, Joseph Lubin, “Kaleido is the first platform to radically simplify and speed the use of blockchain by companies across all industries.”
Kaleido is the first managed SaaS available on AWS and this means that is will be available in all AWS regions across the world. Another noteworthy feature of platform is that it is Ethereum-based, and can offer seamless interoperability between Kaleido-based networks and the public ETH network. And this in my opinion is good news for Ethereum, considering the already widespread use of Amazon’s cloud services.
Steve Cerveny, the enterprise lead at ConsenSys and founder of Kaleido had this to say about the product, “If blockchain doesn't become dramatically easier to use, then companies will have to walk back their investments and our society will be far too slow in realizing blockchain's significant promise… We designed the Kaleido platform from scratch with new user experiences and tools to radically simplify the entire enterprise journey.”
Final Thoughts
While some companies have been quite responsive and experimental with blockchain tech, others are still wary of adopting this nascent tech. And really, you can’t blame them because blockchain is still in its hype phase. A research by Gartner reveals the extent to which these companies are still sitting at docks.
Out of 293 CIOs that were surveyed, only 1% indicated a positive adoption of blockchain adoption within their organization. 8% were planning to experiment blockchain solutions, and 77% indicated that their companies had no interest in the tech.
In general, considering the position of AWS cloud service in the marketplace, I expect a positive response towards Amazon’s BaaS.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://www.wallstreethodl.com/amazon-now-a-blockchain-as-a-service-provider/