Energy Web: Now Available on Amazon
Energy Web RPC nodes on AWS Marketplace is the first step towards Energy Web as-a-service
Zug, Switzerland — December 8, 2022 — This year, Energy Web’s technology roadmap focused on achieving one objective: making it easier for enterprises to use Web 3 technology to create real business value in support of the global energy transition. A key pillar of this strategy is to dramatically streamline the way companies access EW solutions by offering them as-a-service.
Today we’re excited to announce the initial step in this journey with the release of Energy Web RPC nodes in the AWS Marketplace. For the first time, companies can now configure and deploy a component of the Energy Web Decentralized Operating System with the push of a button. Over the coming months we will expand these offerings to include additional components and public cloud marketplaces.
Why we’re offering EWC technology in cloud marketplaces
There’s an adage in the business world that to be successful you need to meet your customers where they are. There are lots of ways to interpret this, but ultimately it boils down to delivering a product or service in a way that aligns with customers’ existing practices and habits. In the context of enterprise software, historically this has been a weakness of Web3 solutions, including Energy Web.
Today nearly every category of enterprise software — from marketing to resource planning, HR management to project management, and teleconferencing to file sharing — is dominated by “Software-as-a-Service” (SaaS) solutions that are offered via subscription models. With few exceptions, gone are the days where large companies roll out complex business applications don’t need any specialized skills or dedicated technical resources in order to adopt a new system; rather, with just a couple of clicks they can launch and customize their solution, and it just works.
In contrast, up until recently implementing an Energy Web solution required a team of developers to provision a dedicated hosting environment prior to creating a bespoke deployment pipeline to configure, install, and integrate multiple discrete components downloaded from public Github repositories. Even with robust supporting documentation and tutorials, that’s a tall ask for companies with mature engineering departments. For companies with more limited IT resources, this approach is simply a nonstarter.
Public cloud marketplaces can significantly reduce this friction by automating and abstracting all of the deployment steps, and delivering a clean user interface to configure and administer EW solutions. Beyond the technical benefits, the marketplace approach also simplifies procurement by consolidating costs under an existing cloud account. Just as popular mobile app stores radically simplified distribution of consumer applications, public cloud marketplaces can act as a springboard for driving widespread adoption of enterprise software.
At Energy Web, we view cloud marketplaces as a critical channel for scaling our impact in 2023 and beyond.
“The business value of Energy Web solutions is clear, but when it comes to implementation we need to deliver the user experience that enterprises have come to expect” said Energy Web CTO, Mani Hagh Sefat. “With SaaS, things that used to take lots of time and effort can now be done with the click of a button. By offering EW solutions in cloud marketplaces, we can enable any business user to start using our technology and getting value from it right away.”
What’s currently available?
RPC nodes, with support for the high-performance Nethermind client (EWC main net, and Volta test net) and legacy OpenEthereum client (EWC main net, and Volta test net), are the first EW service being offered in the AWS Marketplace. RPC nodes act as a gateway to connect to a blockchain, and are required for any application that reads data from or initiates transactions on the EWC (and Volta test network). Prior to the AWS Marketplace offering, the only options for connecting to the EWC were to subscribe to a public RPC node (which is rate limited and not suited for enterprise workloads) or to use the command line to run a dedicated private node (which is technically complex).
With RPC nodes now available in AWS Marketplace, developers and enterprises can easily deploy their own dedicated nodes to enable programmatic and high-volume interactions with the Energy Web Chain.
The Nethermind team has long collaborated with Energy Web to provide smooth, reliable, performant solutions for running EWC nodes. We look forward to seeing enterprises enjoy this improvement to quick node deployment and welcome any opportunities to build solutions for clean and distributed energy resources together. — Tomasz Stańczak, CEO
What’s next?
Long-term, our vision is to deliver all EW Solutions (and individual EW-DOS components) via a fully self-sovereign solution-as-a-service offering that delivers the simplified user experience of public cloud marketplaces with the flexibility and customization features of existing self-hosted models. In this offering, customers will have the ability to deploy EW solutions in multiple public clouds and/or their own environments.
In the near term, we will expand public cloud marketplace offerings (both increasing the number of EW services available, such as Data Exchange and Green Proofs solutions, and adding more cloud providers, such as Azure and Google Cloud) in Q1 — Q2 2023.
About Energy Web
Energy Web is a global non-profit accelerating the clean energy transition by developing open-source technology solutions for energy systems. Our enterprise-grade solutions improve coordination across complex energy markets, unlocking the full potential of clean, distributed energy resources for businesses, grid operators, and customers. Our solutions for enterprise asset management, data exchange, and Green Proofs, our tool for registering and tracking low-carbon products, are underpinned by the Energy Web Chain, the world’s first public blockchain tailored to the energy sector. The Energy Web ecosystem comprises leading utilities, renewable energy developers, grid operators, corporate energy buyers, automotive, IoT, telecommunications leaders, and more. More information on Energy Web can be found at www.energyweb.org or follow us on Twitter @EnergyWebX
