Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) has been a pioneer among technology giants in offering Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) on its cloud platform, Azure. The company embarked on its blockchain journey in November 2015 with its announcement to support Ethereum on Microsoft Azure. Fast forward to today, Azure supports almost all the major blockchain platforms and can deploy a wide variety of network configurations.
Since its first move towards toward blockchain, Microsoft has made meaningful progress by engaging with hundreds of enterprises across sectors and industries. Here’s a look at its major partnerships over the past one year and why such collaborations are important for its overall business.
With the aim to improve visibility and streamline the costly and time-consuming processes in entertainment rights and royalties, Microsoft and Ernst & Young (E&Y) launched a blockchain solution for content rights and royalty management. The underlying network is built using the Quorum blockchain protocol and Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure and blockchain technologies.
To bring digital ledger interoperability to Nasdaq Financial Framework (NFF), Nasdaq (NDAQ) and announced the integration of Nasdaq Financial Framework (NFF) with Microsoft Azure blockchain. The collaboration will work on building a blockchain powered multi-ledger strategy. Nasdaq sees immediate opportunity for blockchain “to manage the delivery, payment, and settlement of transactions that may reside on multiple blockchains with different payment mechanisms.” Worldwide, many prominent stock exchanges are looking at ways to leverage the blockchain technology to fundamentally overhaul traditional mechanisms.
Continuing with its partnerships to help enterprises adopt blockchain technology, Microsoft partnered with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). Together, Microsoft, R3 and TCS aim to drive scaled adoption of blockchain across industries. TCS has already identified and is developing five blockchain platforms that include, digital identity, track and trace, assets in common, asset monetization, and tokenization.
One of the most recent collaborations of Microsoft is with Cargo Community Network (CCN) to launch the world’s first blockchain air cargo billing, costing and reconciliation system. Leveraging Microsoft Azure blockchain technology, CCN is set to deliver a single immutable source of information for air cargo shipment rates, shipment details and billing processes—all via blockchain with real-time updates provided by stakeholders. The use of blockchain will streamline the entire supply chain while enhancing operational efficiency for airlines, cargo agents and freight forwarders.
Despite the potential that blockchain offers to varied businesses, there are multiple obstacles (such as scalability or governance) to overcome before enterprises can fully adopt the technology. Microsoft actively identifies existing technology gaps and helps organizations build durable enterprise-grade blockchain applications. In May last year, Microsoft introduced Azure Blockchain Workbench to public preview and dubbed it as “the fastest way to get started with blockchain on Azure.”
Workbench makes it easy to integrate blockchain workflows with existing systems by using Microsoft Flow and Logic Apps. In November, Microsoft released the initial version of the Azure blockchain development kit which is built on Microsoft’s serverless technologies and seamlessly integrates blockchain with the best of Microsoft and third-party SaaS.
The worldwide spending on blockchain solutions is rising. According to IDC estimates worldwide spending on blockchain solutions is forecasted around $2.9 billion in 2019, an increase of 88.7% from the $1.5 billion spent in 2018. It is expected to reach $12.4 billion in 2022, growing at a CAGR of 76.0% (2018-2022).
While a survey by Juniper shows the enthusiasm among enterprises to adopt blockchain-driven solutions. As per the survey, 65% of companies with more than 10,000 employees were considering or actively engaging in blockchain deployment with almost 25% of companies considering deploying blockchain have moved beyond the Proof of Concept stage. The survey ranks Microsoft as the second most-preferred company to go to for blockchain deployment.
The rising interest among enterprises and increased spending on blockchain solutions presents a huge opportunity for companies such as Microsoft which are focused to emerge as a preferred cloud platform in the “mobile-first, cloud-first, data-powered world.”
Microsoft has the second largest market share in the cloud infrastructure market. During Q2 2019, the intelligent cloud segment recorded a revenue of $9.6 billion, an increase of 20% year-on-year. The revenue from cloud constitutes almost 30% of the company’s revenue. Overall, Microsoft is powering the blockchain trend by collaborating with enterprise clients and helping them adopt blockchain solutions using BaaS which supports its cloud-first vision.
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.
