IBM: International Blockchain Model of the future?
| 16-10-2017 | Carlo de Meijer |
According to a recent Juniper Research study “Blockchain Enterprise Survey”, IBM is seen as the number one provider of blockchain to business, well ahead of its competitors. These results are based on a survey of 400 business users from organisations actively considering, or in the process of deploying blockchain technology. Of the surveyed 43% ranked IBM first, followed by Microsoft (20%) and Accenture.
IBM is better positioned than competitors as far as its blockchain credentials are concerned. The study noted that IBM’s high-profile research development efforts and use of Hyperledger “helped push it to the number one spot”. IBM has been making considerable steps forward not only by research. Also with the development of a great number of projects aimed at broadening the scope of distributed ledger technology to include industries other than the financial services, including asset tracking, logistics, healthcare and the music industry.
Though this blog will especially focus on IBM, I will start showing the main differences between its main rival, Microsoft and that of IBM in their blockchain approach.
IBM versus Microsoft: different approaches
IBM and Microsoft are now intensively working to become the dominant commercial blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platform. They are positioning themselves in the middle of a “frenzy” of blockchain projects and partnerships.
While Microsoft has been adding blockchain modules to its cloud platform Azure already since 2015, IBM launched the first commercial application of blockchain named IBM Blockchain just in March this year. Both systems seem similar on the surface: modular, operate in the cloud, based on open-source code, with massive ecosystems. Both are decentralized ledgers that can be used to manage and validate almost any type of transactions.
Different visions
But on closer inspection it is clear they have different visions for blockchain technology. Both are They thereby are taking decidedly different paths. These two big tech corporates are …
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Economist and researcher
