Enterprise Software on the Internet Computer Blockchain
A massive market opportunity can be seized by developing on-chain solutions to operational challenges for organizations of all sizes.
Blockchain technology is already rapidly transforming software, but the Internet Computer is particularly well positioned to disrupt a multi-billion-dollar industry that’s not getting much attention in the world of Web3.
Enterprise software is what businesses and organizations of all sizes depend on to run their day-to-day operations and secure their digital property. These tools help with everything from payroll and human resources management to customer support, manufacturing production, and data analysis.
Because the sector includes many software solutions that have been slow to evolve, the development of on-chain alternatives running on the Internet Computer would seize on an immense market opportunity. It also gives rise to the potential that decentralized enterprise tools might be shared across businesses and projects, beyond the control of a single party (h/t @CoolPineapple18).
Advantages of the Internet Computer
There are many specific advantages to building enterprise software on the Internet Computer versus the standard Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model:
- Security: The security properties of the Internet Computer minimize the attack surface for data leaks, hacks, and breaches.
- Web3-Enabled: The Internet Computer natively runs decentralized web applications on-chain, including Web3 concepts like DAOs and NFTs that can be incorporated into the design of enterprise software.
- Identity Management: Internet Identity on the Internet Computer makes it far simpler to manage an identity across multiple applications.
- Crypto-Native: Financial transactions can execute far more seamlessly on the Internet Computer ledger than through the current Web2 technology stack.
These combined advantages present some pretty exciting opportunities for enterprise software development on the Internet Computer that delivers unique solutions to operational challenges.
Examples of Enterprise Software
Here are some of the many enterprise software use cases in which the above advantages could be leveraged for superior software running on the Internet Computer versus the current technology stack:
- Disaster Recovery: Disaster recovery software is used to help a company recover from a hack or ransomware. It’s basically a data backup that’s stored off the company’s networks. The problem is these backups tend to be targeted by hackers as well (just ask Colonial Pipelines!). Running the disaster recovery backup and storing the data on the Internet Computer would make the system far less vulnerable to attacks and disruption.
- Identity Management: IT organizations within large companies spend millions of dollars to purchase and configure software to manage employee identities across multiple applications. This software enables automation of account activities, such as removing accounts when an employee leaves the company. These tools need to be heavily customized since every company’s IT landscape is vastly different. However, as a company moves its applications to those running on the Internet Computer, identity management becomes simplified.
- IP Management: It’s extremely challenging to manage confidential information like intellectual property (IP) within a corporation. There are too many escape points, such as employees inappropriately sending IP via unsecure channels, external hacks, internal sabotage, etc. Software that manages IP documents wrapped in an NFT could do things like credential certain people to access the documents and reduce their unauthorized reproduction.
- Human Resources: Human Resources (HR) software like Workday and UKG is ripe for disruption. Hacks are a common problem for companies, particularly since it exposes their employee’s personal data. HR software requires plug-ins with financial rails to execute payroll, increasing the friction and costs of conducting payroll. The user experience of HR software is typically clunky in areas like performance management. HR software running on the Internet Computer could do innovative things like:
— Streamline payroll on a crypto financial rail.
— Transition performance management from a yearly goal-setting activity to one based on tokens. In this model, employees could give their colleagues tokens for value-added work and these tokens could be exchangeable for rewards or even pay increases or spot bonuses providing a true 360-degree employee performance review.
— Improve budget performance by tying it to tokens. In this model, a department may be given a set number of tokens to freely spend in a given timeframe.
— Remove ineffective cross-department utilization where a shared service is not utilized for its most productive means. The tokenization of shared company resources could drastically improve the effectiveness of their distribution.
— Utilization of DAO technology to give employees more of a voice in the direction of company strategy and/or policies. - Collaboration: Collaboration software like Microsoft Teams and Slack has exploded during the pandemic, improving the experience of working remotely. But this collaboration software has components that will forever lag in a Web2 world. The Internet Computer could facilitate better collaboration in multiple ways. Tokenization could be used to build more trust and recognition within teams. DAOs could be utilized to ensure that the appropriate voices are heard in a decision (through expertise-based weighting) or to facilitate decision-making across large teams. NFTs could be used to signify accomplishments and could allow employees to gain respect and trust more rapidly on new teams or new companies if the NFTs are transferable between teams or companies.
- Enterprise Resource Management (ERP): ERP software helps a company plan and execute on its resources. In a manufacturing company, this could be production planning and asset utilization. In a consulting company, this could be managing people resources and time. ERP software like SAP attempts to be a one-stop resource for most business needs. But it’s a struggle to integrate current ERP solutions with other upstream and downstream partners (suppliers and customers, for example) in a secure manner. This results in a high-friction user experience and heavy IT maintenance costs. Hosting an ERP on the Internet Computer would enable easier integrations that are more secure. It could also facilitate industry-wide software applications that companies “plug into” rather than own.
- Time Sheet Management: Utilizing Internet Identity (or other identity solutions) could resolve issues associated with inappropriate timesheet behavior, like employees “clocking in” for other employees.
- Perimeter Control: Companies spend a lot of effort, time, and money to protect their corporate IT perimeter. They use tools like VPNs and firewalls to make unintended access more difficult. But the need for these tools comes from the inherent vulnerability of all the applications running behind the perimeter. As enterprise applications are moved to the more secured Internet Computer, the need for perimeter control decreases. This could result in a massive cost savings for businesses as well as a better user experience for employees.
Conclusion
Enterprise software companies could leverage the Internet Computer to radically innovate their software offerings, and we may be in the early stages of seeing this incredible shift. This could result in a drastic reimagining of work experiences and increases in employee productivity. The Internet Computer is the only blockchain that can offer this level of innovation and value.
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