Blockchain for Business at THINK
Next week I’ll be in San Francisco attending the IBM THINK 2019 conference. As 2019 gets underway, it’s a great time to see emerging technologies continue to mature and have a major impact on enterprise technology roadmaps. One of the most of important of these maturing technologies is blockchain. IBM will be showcasing the IBM Blockchain Platform and many Blockchain for Business use cases across many industries. I am eager to meet with members across the industries at the event.
As most people know, the IBM Blockchain Platform is the leading commercial platform based on The Linux Foundation Hyperledger Fabric open source project. IBM has been a major contributor of Fabric for the past three years and remains very active with the project today.
It is exciting to see the adoption of blockchain for business accelerate with uses cases and supporting consortiums in supply chain, finance, insurance, digital identity, transportation, manufacturing and many more getting attention. I am looking forward to seeing how existing consortia such as TradeLens and IBM Food Safety are broadening the value of their offerings to bring in new members. I am also interested in seeing how industry attendees’ perspectives on blockchain for business have changed since last year’s event in Las Vegas.
One of the fastest growing area for blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) is supply chain. Beyond TradeLens there are many startups and existing technology companies looking to leverage the characteristics inherent in blockchain to improve efficiencies through dispute avoidance, faster transaction cycles and reduced costs. I look forward to seeing some of these other supply chain companies in attendance and hearing their unique propositions.
Chainyard’s work in improving supply chain has been ongoing for past 2 years. The work includes developing several products with IBM in this space, and more recently, the beta rollout for a new Chainyard develop product called Trust Your Supplier. The product is scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2019 and promises to improve the supplier onboarding processes for companies that have complicated supply chains that include a large number of suppliers. The Trust Your Supplier network will be operated as a peer-to-peer platform where both buyers and suppliers will benefit through reduced on-boarding time. In 2019, Trust Your Supplier is expected to bring on up to a dozen large enterprises and over 10,000 of their suppliers.
I’m looking forward to discussing the merits of the Trust Your Supplier network, as well as how Chainyard, 60 team members strong, has developed the expertise to architect, design, deploy and operate a large network.
If you are at THINK 2019 in San Francisco next week, please stop by Booth # 450 at the event to discuss your blockchain journey.
Isaac Kunkel
SVP, Chainyard Consulting Services
