Blockchain is getting bigger in Big Blue.
The demand for technology, better known for supporting bitcoin, is growing so much that it will be one of the largest capacity users next year in about 60 data centers that International Business Machines Corp. rents to other companies around the world. IBM was one of the first big companies to see the promise of Blockchain, contributing code to an open source effort and encouraging startups to test the technology in their cloud for free.
The fact that a 106-year-old company, like IBM, is involved in Blockchain shows how far the digital book has reached since its inception, underpinning the bitcoin deals on the dark web. The market of products and services related to blockchain will reach $ 7.7 billion in 2022, compared to $ 242 million last year, according to the researcher Markets & Markets.
That is creating new opportunities for some of the old warships of the technology world, companies like IBM and Microsoft that are making the transition to cloud services. And products that had gone out of style, such as the databases sold by Oracle Corp., are becoming sexy again.
"All these things will have a new life thanks to the chain of blocks," said Jerry Cuomo, vice president of technology at IBM Blockchain. "Our sales team loves Blockchain because a customer who is buying Blockchain rarely leaves the store with just a blockchain, they go with several things in their cart."
Because several companies, like all parties involved in a supply chain, can use the same blockchain, you are encouraging IBM to review how it compensates sales associates. In the past, sales representatives received payments when their customers purchased IBM technologies directly. Now they will also receive a commission when customers encourage other companies to join them in a blockchain network and use Big Blue's systems and services, Cuomo said.
The blockchain allows companies to do business with each other to register transactions securely. Its strength lies in its reliability: it is difficult to reverse or change what has been recorded. The blockchain can also contain many more documents and data than the traditional storage of the database, which allows obtaining more details and nuanced analyzes. You can also have integrated contracts, such as a car rental, whose virtual key could be transferred to a bank in case of default.
"Blockchain is one of the bright sectors in technology," said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates. "Given that the blockchain infrastructure is quite robust, there will be a large group of revenues associated with sales of equipment, software and related services for blockchain installations."
In addition to hiring third parties to use the cloud, companies will rely more on their own storage databases, said Amit Zavery, senior vice president of Oracle Cloud Platform.
"In traditional database systems, there is only one copy of the data for all reference parts, but the distributed nature of blockchain means that all pairs now have a copy of the data," said Avery. "That will expand the data storage requirements in companies, especially those in industries with typically high transaction rates."
In October, Oracle announced the formation of the Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service, which helps customers extend existing applications, such as enterprise resource management systems. A month earlier, rival SAP said that customers in industries such as the supply chain and manufacturing were testing their service in the cloud. And on November 20, Microsoft expanded its partnership with the R3 consortium to enable financial institutions to deploy blockchains in their Azure cloud.
Big Blue, meanwhile, has been one of the key companies behind the Hyperledger consortium, an open source non-profit project that aims to create efficient standards for the commercial use of blockchain technology. IBM also offers companies a free blockchain trial in their cloud.
Nearly six out of 10 large companies are considering using blockchain, according to a Juniper Research survey of 400 executives, managers and technical staff. The technology is being tested or increasingly used by companies like Walmart and Visa to streamline the supply chain, streamline payments and store records.
Blockchain deployments should increase sales growth in cloud services, databases and servers by 35 percent, according to Susan Eustis, executive director of WinterGreen Research. Within five years, blockchain technology will push more than 55 percent of large companies with more than 1,000 employees to use the cloud instead of their own data centers, compared to the current 17 percent, he said.
IBM is selling more messaging systems to deliver blockchain transactions, web interface products and API systems to communicate more easily with the chain and web application environments, Cuomo said. Database sales could also increase.
"We're seeing a lot of momentum and excitement in this space," said Matthew Kerner, associate general manager of blockchain at Microsoft.
