William Mougayar is a Toronto-based entrepreneur, investor and advisor to Consensus 2016, CoinDesk’s flagship conference. He is also the author of the upcoming book, The Business Blockchain .
In this opinion piece, Mougayar segments the blockchain startup scene, breaking down the available platforms and tech providers and their offerings. A year ago, the blockchain industry landscape consisted mostly of technology companies. It was dominated by various blockchain protocols (eg bitcoin, Ethereum , Ripple ), some bitcoin derivatives (Mastercoin, Counterparty), bitcoin API companies ( Chain , Gem , Coinbase , Coinkite ) and a patchwork of sprouting middleware overlay software companies that were not yet known.
Fast forward to today, and we see a different landscape of players, with entry from several new companies that are focused on implementations, and other newcomers with software capabilities at higher stack levels than the blockchain protocols themselves.
So, if you are an enterprise organization pondering your implementation options, what choices do you have in order to get going?
The table below summarizes the main options: IT Services
This option is pursued via a typical outsourcing arrangement with a firm that will deliver or build anything you’d like.
Most of the known global IT/consulting firms now have a blockchain practice, and some of these companies specialize in particular technologies or have specific alliances with certain solutions or technology providers.
Others will start via a consulting approach to help you discover use cases or build strong cases for proofs of concept and trials. Some choices: Accenture, ConsenSys, Cognizant, Deloitte, IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), Ernst & Young. Blockchain first In this case, you work directly with the given blockchain tools and stack.Assembly is required, so this isn’t for the faint of heart at this point, as many of the technologies are still developing and evolving. However, working directly with the blockchain […]
