By: Daria Rud
The technologies giant Microsoft is connecting its major products to blockchain. A number of Microsoft platforms has already been quietly linked to the technology.
In modern world, it is vital to keep up with the times and adapt quickly to emerging innovations. That’s why more and more companies try to link their business to blockchain. Microsoft is no exception. Three years ago, the technology giant was the first to link blockchain and the cloud through its cloud services platform, Microsoft Azure. The company has not stopped at that and is currently increasing it’s relevance in the Distributed Ledger Technology, connecting its major products and services to blockchain.
According to Microsoft Azure general manager Matt Kerner, the company aims to provide users with the ability to port their data from its platforms to the blockchain. He said:
“[Blockchain] is already improving the way transactions happen. We believe the same will be true with data analytics.”
Kerner added that Microsoft had already started to build networks between its blockchain providers and other platforms, such as Sharepoint Online, Salesforce, Office 365 Outlook, Dynamics 365 Online, SAP, and Twitter.
The company sees some significant reasons for such a step. Firstly, the world economy has seen a push from oil to data, and an ambition to prove which analytical system interprets data the best has intensified. As a result, a number of firms are emerging with the objective to better organize, interpret and format data. Kerner said:
“What blockchain is doing is creating a multi-party business process that is moving out of email, phone calls, spreadsheets and into a single system with a single view on the data that all of the participants can rely upon and trust.”
Secondly, Microsoft’s step is a part of the evolution of Big Data. Prior to Blockchain technology, the cloud was the biggest innovation in technology. And Blockchain is going further, enabling a single data set to be shared amongst multiple organizations, which has already led to improvements in transactions between companies today.
Moreover, Microsoft is expanding, and the need to control data in new offices requires blockchain technology, which helps in streamlining processes carried out in the company.
Microsoft is rather ambitious when it comes to its blockchain projects. The most important of them is Microsoft Azure. It is a cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, testing, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers. It provides software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and supports many programming languages, tools and frameworks, including both Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems.
In February of this year, the technology giant announced a blockchain-based digital identity management solution. In June, it announced another blockchain project to manage copyrights and loyalties. Having partnered with financial conglomerate Ernst and Young, Microsoft came up with blockchain-based platform that would provide an accurate and real-time calculation of each participant’s royalty position along with enhanced visibility to the transactions versus the legacy process.