Blockchains, Enterprise and Real

Abstract: To avoid regret spend, you choice of the blockchain platform should be driven by a careful evaluation of your innovation strategy and a careful reflection on the arc of history in technology. History has shown that “consumer” technology e.g. from Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google inevitably wins in the “enterprise” too because (a) Consumers and enterprise customers are the same human beings and (b) “made for enterprise” technology simply fails to evolve fast enough.

Blockchain platforms marketed as enterprise that were “built to past requirements” 2 years ago are evolving far more slowly than open, permissionless blockchain technology that is already being customised, configured, packaged and deployed in the enterprise today — and will be ubiquitous in the same way as Linux has become the default choice for Enterprise.

Blockchain as a marketing term

Some platforms such as Corda that have nothing to do with #Blockchain are currently sold as blockchain for enterprise. It's not only a misleading message, it also misses the point entirely about how technology works.

A brief history of ‘enterprise’ technology?

Let’s take ourselves out of the blockchain echo chamber and the marketing hype of closed, proprietary technology vendors for a second, and take a look at technologies that preceded blockchain. We notice that there's no iPhone for enterprise or personal computer for enterprise. There is a reason these devices are called an “i” Phone, not an “enterprise phone” and a “personal computer”, not an “enterprise computer”... the only “enterprise computers” are mainframes and AS400 systems. All the other enterprise computers i.e. Silicon Graphics, HP UX, Next, AIX, are all DED or disappearing. I will explain why next.

i-Phone! you Blackberry?

Before there were smartphones, people used blackberries. Blackberries were smartphones for enterprise. They did a great job of email in a sandboxed walled garden environment and a pretty bad job of consumer apps. It worked for a while. Enterprise blockchains are not that different. You can’t build much of a p2p/consumer application on the so called “built for enterprise blockchains” because they are usable and secure only if you wrap them in iron clad firewalls. None can survive on the internet, let alone be useful for consumer apps.

The One Device!

Eventually enterprise customers realised that they had one less usable device for work and one really awesome device for personal use. It’s not hard to see that blackberry was sold in the same way as Corda... “blackberry is designed for security and privacy”, but if you want to do anything powerful like play games or... write an ERC20/ERC1400 token you have to bend your back and twist your neck as a developer.

Developer Ecosystems

However, soon every developer was building for either iPhone or Android because consumers flocked to these. There was no reason or way for developers to build for blackberry. Most developers that worked on an 'enterprise project' were building functional apps for berries with thrice the amount of effort as it took to build on developer friendly platforms like iOS and android that provided essential platform services as part of the infrastructure.

Innovation Follows Developers

In the meantime armies of kids were doing amazingly cool things on Android and iOS that were decidedly 'not enterprise’ things like building complex games, communication apps, dating apps, entertainment apps and in the process creating foundational tech that was needed to make these happen. This consumer led, human centric creativity is what drives an overwhelming fraction of technological innovation vs projects done by committee to meet known business requirements. In the process the passionate, weirdo, nerd army created technology for security, privacy and scalability that the likes of JP Morgan, one of the first banks to use iPhone for email at work had to take notice of. Soon came “Good” for enterprise, a sandbox for privacy and security, then came installable security policies for iPhones, and suddenly you couldn’t find enough bins to cast your blackberries in.

Good developers don’t wake up in the morning and say I am an “enterprise developer” or a “consumer app developer”. Better developers play and the best developers hack. ‘Play’ and ‘hack’ are the twin engines of evolution which looking back a few years appears to be a revolution

Why are “Consumer” businesses like Amazon, Google and Facebook winning in “Enterprise” Technology?

Consumers are Way More Demanding than Enterprise

With a little bit of reflection, it becomes quite clear that “enterprise” doesn’t mean better or more powerful technology. For example Risk managers in banks deal with painful excel sheets day after day and work around their legacy systems so many manual processes. The same humans expect vastly better systems for every activity in their daily lives. Most enterprise customers have a crummy Thinkpad at work, and a swanky windows machine or mac at home. Enterprise technology is often pared down, wrapped up consumer technology with a defined list of bolt on capabilities such as tools for ease of support and administration in a much more sandboxed deployment configuration.

The Economics of Technology Has Changed Irreversibly

Enterprise first, consumer next was the only way to be until the 90s because chips, compute, memory, code and disc were all so expensive. Everything changed from the 90s onward to Consumer first, enterprise as a feature, driven by a progressively powerful internet and open source. When it comes to computing resources, the arc of decentralisation has been on the move for decades, led by consumer access to hardware and software at continuously declining price points and lower cost of access.

But this is backend!

Some will argue that what is the case of smartphones is not the case for databases. Not true. Follow the path of the databases in the order of time — Postgress, db2, oracle, sql server, Mongo, oracle, mysql, Hadoop and Amazon RDS. Technology has been increasingly consumer led and democratised for start-small-commoditised-scale-big over time.

But It’s Networking!

Networking technology … same story… when networking was a matter of installing expensive hardware, enterprise was king and Cisco was going to hit a trillion in valuation. Since then, software has eaten the world of networking hardware, cutting prices and putting industrial grade innovations in the hands of consumers before big corporations can put their head around what to do with the software. The rapid migration from “enterprise” T1 to T2 lines to “consumer” fibre optics and the many fun networked devices we find in our homes..

Now we come to blockchains…

The same trend is visible today with blockchain. Enterprise non blockchains are evolving so much slower than public permissionless #blockchain technology because

PUBLIC + PERMISSIONLESS + Open Source = Rapid Evolution.

To paraphrase Adidas, the internet is open, #buidl

Ethereum in the enterprise

These wheels have been in motion for a while in #blockchain resulting in unbeatable tech and driving the most compelling solutions in enterprise. Let’s take a closer look:

1. One of the only two trade finance platforms in production today is on Enterprise #ethereum.
2. The biggest energy trading platform on blockchain is on enterprise ethereum.
3. The most prominent central bank backed settlement token platform @fnality is on ethereum.
4. The most compelling post trade efficiency solution Liquidshare is on enterprise ethereum.
5. LSEs issuance platform using @nivaura is on enterprise ethereum
6. JPMorgan’s JPMCoin and IIN are on enterprise ethereum

A long list of digital asset platforms inspired by the same ICO tech that was initially clearly not 'enterprise' is driving a digital asset revolution across sectors. In fact there are so many solutions being built by Ethereum developers in the enterprise that it's impossible to keep track of them. Afterall, there is no way to keep track of who's building what on an open standard e.g. Linux or Android, the same holds for ethereum

Does this mean #Ethereum is the guaranteed winner?

Not necessarily. It’s early in this space but the odds are good. Open source, open standards and consumer friendly #blockchain ecosystems are the guaranteed winner. Ethereum is the current leader in this pack.

So if you label yourself as “enterprise” and are therefore susceptible to “mainframe marketing”, ask... Is your innovation strategy essentially a bet that proprietary closed technology created by vendors will be able to compete with the incredible volume and speed of open #innovation being produced by the imagination, creativity, passion and skills of hundreds of thousands of consumers and innovators around the world? If so, it is a very brave bet indeed.

And with that, I rest my case. For the rest of the messy but predictable history of the future, I recommend watching Halt and Catch Fire on Amazon prime video.

The internet is open, GO #Buidl!