Azure Blockchain Workbench now available as Public Preview!

Hey folks,

 

Excited to share that this morning at Build we announced the release of Azure Blockchain Workbench (formerly App Builder)! Workbench is the fastest way to get started with blockchain on Azure and orchestrates services such as Azure Active Directory, Azure Key Vault, Azure SQLDB, Application Insights, Azure Functions and Service Bus around a pre-configured blockchain network and into a reference architecture that can be used to build a blockchain-based application. We’ve been working with a number of you all in our private preview the past months and really excited to get your feedback on new offering. Workbench is an easy-to-use tool with a simplified interface that enables users to create end-to-end blockchain applications leveraging the best of Azure. It comes equipped with sample cross-organizational workflows and smart contracts as well as an out of the box UI and admin experience that developers, ISVs and SI partners alike can use to drastically reduce development costs and accelerate time to value.

 

The Azure Blockchain Workbench provides the following key capabilities and differentiation factors:

• Easy and automatic creation of blockchain applications– Reduces blockchain application development time from months to weeks.
• Abstraction of blockchain “plumbing”–Users can configure and deploy a consortium network with just a few clicks. Ideal for dev/test scenarios Workbench’s automatic ledger deployment and network construction greatly reduces infrastructure development time.
• Automatic integration of blockchain application with non-blockchain services– Reduce development time and cost with prebuilt integrations to the cloud services needed for application development. Associate blockchain identities with Azure Active Directory (AD) for easier sign in and collaboration. Store secrets and keys securely with Azure Key Vault. Ingest and manage the messages and events required to trigger your smart contracts with Service Bus and Event Grid. Signing, hashing, and routing tools transform messages into the format expected by the blockchain’s native API. Synchronize on-chain data with off-chain storage and databases to more easily query attestations and visualize ledger activity.
• Extensible platform– Workbench is built to be modular and extensible. Microsoft customers and partners can easily integrate blockchain workflows with existing systems and applications leveraging Microsoft Flow and Logic Apps and extend capabilities with a REST-based API for client development and a message-based API for system-to-system integration.

 

Marc Mercuri from our engineering team did a great walkthrough on how to build your first smart contract with Workbench on Microsoft Mechanics.

 

Check out the link here.

 

For more information you can check out our announce blog and get your hands dirty with some great documentation, including get started guides, tutorials and sample workflows.

 

Let us know if you have thoughts or questions

Zeyad