Blockchain for your business: What does it mean, what should you do about it?

Blockchain for your business
What does it mean, what should you do about it?
20th September 2017
Craig Wentworth
Principal Analyst

© MWD Advisors 2017 www.mwdadvisors.com 2
Looking beyond cryptocurrencies…
…to the transformative potential of blockchain
 What is ‘blockchain for business’?
– How does it work?
– What is it good for / not good for?
 How are companies using it?
– Examples
– Issues
 The blockchain vendor landscape
– Consortia and open source, big firms, start-ups
 Why should I care?
– What can we learn?
– What should I do next?

3
What is ‘blockchain for business’?

4www.mwdadvisors.com© MWD Advisors 2017
Business networks (a traditional view)







?
Intermediary

5www.mwdadvisors.com© MWD Advisors 2017
Business networks (the blockchain view)
 



?














?

  







Public blockchains vs Private blockchains
 Open community
 Anyone can join; anonymous or
pseudonymous peers
 No trust; limited consensus
options
 Slow; can’t tune for performance
 Permissioned network; can attest
to validity of users’ identities
 Don’t need to incentivise ‘miners’
 Can enhance transaction privacy
 Can leverage real-world business
relationships

What can you store on a blockchain (public or private)?
Data
 Digital fingerprints
 On-chain / off-chain data
Business logic
 Smart contracts
 Workflow and relationships
 Distributed applications
 Decentralised autonomous
organisations

© MWD Advisors 2017 8
What’s a blockchain (public or private) good for?
www.mwdadvisors.com
• When multiple parties share control over
data
• Where processes extend beyond
organisational boundaries
• And you’re in a trust-less environment
• Removing costly intermediaries
• Tracking assets and establishing
provenance

What are companies doing with it?

What types of projects are live now?
Payments

Identity
Provenance
Access to data
Automation
Financial
Services
Manufacturing
Government
© MWD Advisors 2017 10www.mwdadvisors.com

Financial services
• Settlements in cross-
border payments, trade
finance, securities
• Micropayments
• Digital currency trading

Insurance
• Travel insurance
• Life insurance
• Property insurance
• Vehicle insurance
• Health insurance

Manufacturing
• Agile, fluid supply chains
• Supply chain
documentation
management
• Asset provenance

Healthcare and life sciences
• Universal healthcare
record
– Patient care
– Insurance
• Clinical trains
• Supply chain validation

Transport and travel
• Digital twins, digital
maintenance books
• Personalisation
• Electric vehicle re-charging
• Ride sharing

Government
• Access to public
information
• Transferring & tracking
ownership of assets
• Establishing a trusted
digital identity
• Voting

Entertainment and media
• Proof of creation
• Proof of ownership
• Transfer & administration
of digital rights
• Micropayment distribution

The blockchain vendor landscape

Ethereum
• Open source platform, with
‘enterprise-focused’ versions (e.g.
Quorum, MS Azure BaaS)
• Smart contracts for executing
business logic
• Distributed applications,
decentralised autonomous
organisations
• Scalability, privacy concerns

Hyperledger
• Linux Foundation, open source
• 140+ members (including IBM, SAP,
Oracle, Intel)
• Umbrella for framework / tool projects
– Fabric blockchain framework
– Composer chaincode tool

R3
• Consortium of 45+ financial
institutions
• Exploring blockchain affinity in
projects aimed at banks,
regulators, and clients, etc.
• R3 Corda distributed ledger
platform

What are the big firms doing?
• IBM – Hyperledger, IBM Blockchain Platform
• Microsoft – MS Azure Blockchain-as-a-Service, MS Coco
• SAP – SAP Cloud Platform Blockchain, SAP Ariba
• Oracle – Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service
• TIBCO – Ethereum platform / analytics integration
• Google – GV investments, DeepMind, no GCP service as yet
• AWS – Blockchains on 3rd party marketplace, no AWS services as yet

Some interesting start-ups
• BitFury – Digital Assets PaaS framework, Lightning Network,
Bitcoin anchoring for private blockchains
• Civil – Ethereum-based marketplace for journalism
• Everledger – Hyperledger-based valuable asset tracking
(1,000,000+ diamonds tracked in its ledger)
• FACTOM – Harmony blockchain-based distributed document
management platform
• Rockchain – Ethereum-based data processing (distributes data
intelligence, leaves original data in place)

What can we learn from the early-to-market vendors and
early adopters?
What’s blockchain good for?
• Adding trust
• Removing intermediaries
• Automating business processes
• Tracking assets
• More than just Financial Services
use cases
• Immature
• In need of integration (with IoT
and legacy systems)
• Most adopters still at proof-of-
concept stage
• Move from efficiency savings to
business disruption
What state is the market in?

Issues
Governance,
Regulation, Legal
 Access to data
 Smart contract policy
 Regulatory clarity
 Legal jurisdictions
Business process /
cultural
• Blockchain affinity
• Shared processes
• Winners and losers
• Skills shortage
Technology
• Immature
• Scalability, privacy
challenges
• Standards,
integration

What should I do next?
• Understand your problem /
opportunity
• Understand blockchain
• Assess for ‘blockchain affinity’
• Select vendors / partners
• Develop proof-of-concept,
business models, adoption
strategies, metrics
• Deploy, test, learn, repeat
• Scale into production
• Repeatable, quality-assured
engineering cycle for smart
contracts
• Gravitate towards open
interoperable platforms
• Interoperability beyond
blockchain – IoT, legacy back-
office IT, consumer –focused
cloud applications
How can I industrialise the
process in the longer term?

Craig Wentworth, Principal Analyst
@craigwentworth
craig@mwdadavisors.com
Any questions?
www.mwdadvisors.com/blockchain-discovery-workshops
www.mwdadvisors.com/blockchain-project-tracker

Blockchain for your business: What does it mean, what should you do about it?

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Blockchain for your business: What does it mean, what should you do about it?

Similar to Blockchain for your business: What does it mean, what should you do about it? (20)

More from MWD Advisors

More from MWD Advisors (8)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Blockchain for your business: What does it mean, what should you do about it?