Since launching its Azure Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) last November, Microsoft has worked with partners to understand core industry scenarios, and to develop the technologies to bring blockchain to enterprises, governments, and individuals.
Project Bletchley is Microsoft’s vision for an open, modular blockchain powered by Azure, according to Marley Gray, director of blockchain business development and strategy at Microsoft, in an Azure blog . That vision, articulated in a white paper on Github, includes new elements the company believes to be key to enterprise blockchain architecture.
Bletchley represents Microsoft’s approach to an enterprise consortium blockchain ecosystem. It marks an attempt to bring distributed ledger platforms to create solutions to business problems in an open platform.
Project Bletchley themes include:
• Platform openness
• Privacy, identity, key management, security, operations management and interoperability
• Scale, performance, support and stability
• Consortium blockchains – members-only, permissioned networks for members to execute contracts
Azure serves as the cloud platform where distributed applications are created and delivered. Its availability in 24 regions, hybrid cloud capabilities, extensive compliance certification portfolio, and enterprise-grade security allow blockchain adoption, particularly in regulated areas such as government, financial services and healthcare.
It will be open to various blockchain protocols and support simple, unspent transaction output-based protocols such as Hyperledger; sophisticated, smart contract-based protocols such as Ethereum ; and others.Project Bletchley introduces two concepts: Cryptlets and blockchain middleware. Blockchain Middleware Blockchain middleware will offer core services that function in the cloud, such as operations management and identity, along with data services such as machine learning and analytics. Such technologies can ensure the secure operation blockchain provides. They can also provide the reporting and business intelligence capabilities regulators and businesses require.New middleware will work with existing Azure services such as Key Vault and Active Directory and other blockchain ecosystem technologies to offer a […]
