IBM goes all in on blockchain, offers cloud-based service

“As with any early-stage, highly-complex technology that demonstrates the ability to change the way we live our lives and conduct business, blockchain demands a cross-industry, open source collaboration to advance the technology for all”, writes Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. It’s like a dream come true to be able to contribute to the Hyperledger project and to work with the level of players within the Foundation. Hyper Ledger has a series of big-name premier partners including ANZ, ABN-Amro, IBM, Intel, JP Morgan, Red Hat, VMware and Wells Fargo to name a few.

IBM’s involvement in the development of blockchain marks a big step for the technology’s forward momentum. John Wolpert, the Global Blockchain Offering Director for IBM at The Blockchain Conference, reflected IBM’s commitment to position itself as “an enterprise blockchain solution leader”.

Ribbit.me, a universal loyalty solution built on blockchain technology, announced today that it has joined the Linux Foundation’s open source Hyperledger project.

With a range of announcements, IBM has pushed for the quick adoption of blockchain technology among enterprise and multiple industries with several newly revealed initiatives and commitments. Blockchain services will be made available on IBM’s Bluemix, where develoeprs can access DevOps tools to create, execute, run, and monitor blockchain applications on the IBM Cloud.

The thought of applying blockchain innovation outside of the domain of Bitcoin has picked up a great deal of enthusiasm from groundbreaking organizations in the previous year or somewhere in the vicinity.

IBM also brings Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain together. RFID information, barcode-scan events and other device-created data will be pulled together and used by blockchain-based ledgers to enable such smart contracts, IBM says. This would allow communication between devices and blockchains distributed ledgers to update or validate smart contracts. For example, as an IoT-connected package moves along multiple distribution points, the package location and temperature information could be updated on a blockchain.

IBM stock is up 1.4% Tuesday.

The company also announced that the Japan Exchange Group would evaluate IBM’s Hyperledger Project blockchain code to see if it can be used for trading and settlement in low liquidity markets. The companys ultimate aim is to become the go-to blockchain service and software provider for financial institutions.

Be that as it may, IBM is focusing on its new blockchain endeavors at potential monetary industry clients, as well as at an assortment of logistics clients too.

“We’re excited about the potential for blockchain to transform logistics value chains into a more seamless process that provides a trusted view of every piece of cargo”.