Blockchain Journey Summary
By Krzysztof Bury, Bartosz Dluzen, Maciej Marut
It’s been couple of months since the beginning of our journey, into the wilderness but also beauty of blockchain. We already see that hype has been smaller and people are becoming more reasonable about the technology itself. Unfortunately it seems this is not because of the hard work of management and technical teams understanding it better but because of its connections with cryptocurrencies.
We’ve done our best to demystify this technology a bit to you and to show what possibilities it brings. On the way we have also found some concerns that are still unresolved. We also purposely avoided its connection to cryptocurrencies.
This article aims to be a brief summary of all the things that we’ve written so far and a sort of guidance as to what may lay ahead of the blockchain technology. Also it is to make sure it is bought correctly as a concept that is a substitute to others not standalone world saving solution. As we can see biggest companies and banks are investing into it (also officially) so it does have a merit. The question is whether it applies to your case in general and if it applies to your case now?
The Vision
Completeness of Vision, is one of several different categories that Gartner is evaluating companies by[1].
It’s important, as it clearly emphasize a key factor, that apart of “wants” and “needs” your company, also knows were it wants to be in certain period of time.
From the perspective of blockchain technology it is even more significant. Having a strategy and a vision, will not only tell you how you want to leverage the technology and what problems it will solve, but also what is your end goal — and by design what are your “in between” steps. I think we can now disclose that what we and many others have learned blockchain is only a part of a big puzzle of technologies you have to utilize to achieve your vision.
In addition this lets you easily make a decision if there will be a need to close the project due to any unforeseen reasons.
Vision is important for Strategy, it can be cumbersome to come up with a solid one. But having a poor one is better than not having one at all. Thought out vision positions you to a good start or even when taking worst case scenario to a planned exit (yes — please dont forget the exit or a rollback plan!).
The Strategy
Blockchain, as powerful as it can be will not solve all the world’s problems — period. When you have a problem in you company that you want to tackle, and you are thinking that blockchain is the thing that will solve it — think again. Especially if this is not your core competency find others that solved same issue and check if they did it using blockchain.
At the beginning of 2018 when cryptocurrency Bitcoin was reaching almost 20 000$, simple addition of sentence “Blockchain Ready” or “Blockchain Based” product could improve your sale or multiply your company shares[2]. Usually what you found underneath was one smart contract and a bunch of web technologies around it. As technology matures we see bigger players in different value chain or workflow technologies adding this as a small component of their strategy. If you browse through marketing materials of IBM or Workday (cloud based ERP) as the example you will see smaller or bigger chunks of blockchain already there.
Don’t make this mistake, use technology wisely, measure possibilities, fail fast but on the other hand don’t be afraid to try. Look at other market players, in most of the cases the are sharing their experiences publicly via blog posts, conferences or meetup’s. All of this is necessary to understand and think first if blockchain really is a technology that you are looking for.
It is wise to add blockchain technology to your technology strategy. It does not have to be immediate or large investment. Occasional PoC or even attendance of your team in topic related conference will do. Sometime in the future you might be able to just buy a blockchain component you need when you need it the most.
The Knowledge
For us personally this is the crucial factor for this technology. And to be honest any new technology that enters the market. This may sound obvious, but to understand at least the fundamentals, is the most important thing before deciding to invest time and effort. Once you have the basics, new questions will appear — some of them we’ve tried to answer in this article: Joining Blockchain Initial Expert Question Set, for others like:
- How to start PoC
- What to choose: public or private blockchain
- How to find best experts on the market
- How to measure return on this investment
- etc.
You will need to find the answer yourself.
One way or the other, without the knowledge about the technology — as in many other cases not only in IT — you will be exposed to failure. This failure, may be expensive, due to many variables:
- Lack of solid regulations around technology
- Inconsistent law (court decision / countries decision)
- No guarantee in terms of security of your funds (difference in terms of ICO — Initial Coin Offering and IPO — Initial Public Offering)
- etc.
Invest some time on getting knowledge, and save you a lot of worries later on.
Summary
Blockchain as a technology has got a place and is an innovative approach to old issues connected to transfer of information (and can be used to transfer value). It will not replace many technologies that were invented before it — it is a substitute to many. Use it where it makes sense!
