Pedestrians pass in front of the Salesforce Tower in New York, U.S. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
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Hyperledger, from the Linux Foundation, is gathering more steam after welcoming two of the world’s largest top-10 enterprise software companies by revenue to the blockchain consortium.
This week it was announced that eight new large enterprises would be cementing their blockchain journey by joining Hyperledger. Other than Microsoft and Salesforce, both already heavily invested in blockchain, the intake included a U.S.-based supply chain consulting firm, a Russian metal company, and a Polish tech company, among others.
It is an important announcement as it demonstrates the growing snowball effect from enterprises and their interest in blockchain. Hyperledger is an open source collaborative project created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It is boosting not only its members but improving the technology too.
More than a passing interest
Microsoft is no stranger to the blockchain space, and have been pushing the boundaries with their offerings, such as the Coco framework, which is an open-source system that enables high-scale, confidential blockchain networks that meet all essential enterprise requirements.
Moreover, on Azure, a cloud computing service from Microsoft, the software giant offers a blockchain workbench to help create and deploy blockchain applications for businesses.
Hyperledger is not even the first consortium they have joined. The company is looking into developing a decentralized identity system on the blockchain and is involved with the standard-setting organization the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as well as the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF)
However, by joining they Hyperledger consortium, Microsoft is taking more significant steps into an ecosystem that is starting to go beyond just face-value experimenting.
“Our relations with Microsoft and Salesforce go back a year, so it’s a nice culmination of it,” Hyperledger executive director Brian Behlendorf told CoinDesk. “Now it’s not an academic interest from their side anymore, it’s something they want to take part in.”
“Our journey in the blockchain ecosystem has brought us a long way, and now is the time for us to join the Hyperledger community,” Marley Gray, principal architect for blockchain engineering at Microsoft, added in a press release.
Next step for Salesforce
Salesforce is also a big name in software, focusing in on cloud computing service as a software (SaaS) and specializing in customer relationship management (CRM). It is also another major enterprise that has not missed the blockchain boat either.
Salesforce’s entry into the blockchain market recently came when they announced their Salesforce Blockchain, interestingly built on the Hyperledger Sawtooth platform. Their offering boasts three clients that are testing the product. They include data research company IQVIA, the rating agency S&P Global, as well as Arizona State University.
Salesforce is also already taking part in blockchain-advancing projects. They announced in April that they had joined the Blockchain Research Institute (BRI), the global blockchain think tank with participants like Microsoft, IBM, the Bank of Canada, PepsiCo, Raiffeisen Bank, Polymath, and others.
Importance of Hyperledger
The reason why Hyperledger is growing into such blockchain behemoth is the dual nature of its benefits. Companies coming aboard are required to pay their dues and contribute to the advancement of the technology – which is reaching new heights in terms of use cases.
In being a part of this consortium, the enterprises are then also in the driving seat of the usage of the technology, profiting from its development and deployment, all the while shaping its direction.
[“source=forbes”]
