Welcome to the Blockchain AMA!

[Karthik Ramamoorthy]

Hi Guys,

I am Karthik. Azure Architect from Cloud Technology Partners. We are interested in latest developments on Private blockchains and Consortium based block chains. I am aware Azure already have R3's Corda. Is there any user stories, references or whitepapers around implementing Private/Consortium blockchains in Azure?

 Now Azure being a launch partner for Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, is there products in roadmaps to build enterprise blockchain?

Thanks,

Karthik

[#2]

We are working with lots of organizations to help them form consortia. There are great assets in Azure too to support this. With Azure to create secured connections between consortium members. In some of the POCs we are running we are seeing customers move from internal POCs to consortiums with partners and regulators. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority are an example of this

[#3]

When looking at most enterprise scenarios, over 90% of the time a private or consortium blockchain network will be needed. There is very much a lot of interest on our side to support these types of scenarios. In fact, we are in the process of releasing an updated version of the multi-node consortium network solution to make it easier to create a blockchain network across multiple subscriptions (i.e. multiple companies can setup a consortium blockchain network). As part of that release, we will be including documentation, which explains more technical information on how to setup these types of networks. That said, our goal is to continue to push in this space to support other blockchain stacks, such as quorum and others. In other words, as time goes on you should see additional Azure marketplace offerings, which provide easy solutions for setting up blockchain networks across multiple blockchain stacks. 

In addition to consortium networks, it is important to address issues and limitations with the technology that prevent the technology from being enterprise ready. There are multiple areas of development in this space and we will be talking about some of this functionality soon.

[#4]

Excellent. Is there any resources to read up on Hong Kong Monetary Authority user story, recommended architectures, tech stacks, capacity planning, best practices etc?

[#5 · Accepted solution]

Take a look at Quorum found here https://www.jpmorgan.com/country/US/en/Quorum. It is based on Ethereum and can handle private transactions within a Consortium

[#6]

Hi Adam, Blockchain has a lot of applications outside of the financial industry. The financial industry right now is the most ripe for distruption which is why you are hearing about it. Blockchain can be applied to things like data ownership, content creation, medical health records, or deeds/titles etc. Being a decentralized data structure and consensus network - Blockchain provides proof of ownership over digital assets which can be queried by anyone. The area of opportunity that blockchain can provide is basically removing any industry with middle men. IE Banks verifying transactions where the blockchain can do so much quicker.

[#7]

Do you have examples of titles and deeds implementation?

[#8]

We have a demo we've created around home title transfer. We are in the process of making this demo available more broadly. Hopefully this demo will be released soon.