Why is Microsoft Connecting its Major Products to Blockchain Technology?

Crypto Land News
Sep 5, 2018 · 3 min read

About three years ago, the Microsoft Azure was the first to bring blockchain to the cloud. Now, it is connecting the technology to just nearly everything else.

The software giant Microsoft Azure was quietly building bridges between its blockchain services, as well as others, it widely used infrastructure and platforms like Office 365 Outlook, SharePoint Online, Salesforce, as well as Dynamics 365 CRM Online, SAP, and even Twitter, according to the general manager of Microsoft Azure, named Matt Kerner. The crucial idea actually is to permit the customers of Microsoft to port their data from those platforms into the cloud, and from there to a blockchain.

The potential to mine data becomes limitless

According to Microsoft, additionally to the usually touted blockchain efficiencies, one of the less-discussed benefits of distributed ledger technology or DLT in a cloud environment like Azure is that it amasses data from several companies in a standardized format at scale. Then, the potential to mine data for all sorts of insights becomes limitless.

Hence, the company integrates tools like Microsoft Flow and Logic Apps, which actually offer hundreds of connectors to thousands of applications, into the Azure Blockchain Workbench, which is a service that it launched in May this year, to make the creation of blockchain apps easier.

Kerner explained that all this is part of the evolution of Big Data. He also pointed out that before blockchain, cloud computing enabled departments within the same company to break out of their data silos and collaborate on heterogeneous data sets, in that way increasing smarts through machine learning (ML), as well as artificial intelligence (AI).

In one interview, Kerner said that blockchain empowers the next step, which is enabling a single, as well as authentic data set shared across counterparties. This already improves the way in which transactions occur. He also said that they believe the same is going to be real with data analytics.

But, stepping back, a lot of people would argue that data is now the most valuable naturally happening resource on the Earth. As the race to prove the best analytics increases, firms are not springing up whose sole aim is to structure, as well as format data, to run AI algorithms on.

However, with enterprise blockchain, you will get the structured and formatted data part thrown in for free, as Kerner stated that many customers of Azure were discovering.

He also said that what blockchain is doing is creating a multi-party business process which is moving out of email, phone calls, as well as spreadsheets and into a single system with a unique view on the data which all of the participants can rely upon and trust.

Looking forward, Kerner also said that bringing vast amounts of unstructured and siloed data into a context where it could probably be leveraged and even shared, is going to drive exponential change.

He said that even the fiercest of competitors can onboard and mutually derive benefit from that system, as well as find new revenue streams.

Read more: https://cryptolandnews.com/why-is-microsoft-connecting-its-major-products-to-blockchain-technology/

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