Blockchain - Hype or Business Critical?

Over the last couple of years, few topics have stirred as much interest in the area of computing as Blockchain has. Blockchain was hyped as the solution for everything. A new kind of technology that would at some point impact every business to some extent. Blockchain even created a run on crypto-currencies. Blockchain and everything touching the topic is hyped to the extent that was last seen shortly before the burst of the internet bubble.

By now, Blockchain is starting to outgrow the initial hype and people are starting to ask questions as to what the real business impacts and implications will be.

At Arvato Systems, we saw a potential in Blockchain early on and didn’t wait until now to figure out its possible impacts. We started out over a year ago and dedicated efforts to acquire a deep understanding of the technologies. However, we didn’t just want to learn the base concepts. We concentrated on applying Blockchain towards relevant business needs, trying to answer the questions and challenges around the new technology.

Therefore, we worked to find clarifications for common but still open questions around Blockchain, such as:

• What can Blockchain actually do?
• What are the benefits but also the disadvantages compared to current technologies?
• To which company areas or business cases are Blockchain applicable?
• What are the efforts involved in an implementation?
• Is Blockchain really secure, even if it is public? How about data privacy?

We started our Blockchain journey the practical way by doing proofs of concepts (POCs), to get insights into the open questions.  The POCs not only focused on solving just the difficulty of initial realization but also on maintaining and operating in the long term.

One example is a POC that showcases a partner and company eco-system for contract management between the various parties. The architecture is based on our self-developed and established serverless framework with a contract signing application built on top. In a matter of weeks, this POC allowed us to prove, that minimal development efforts around blockchain and cloud solutions create real business values. The results were astounding. We not only gained invaluable insights which helped us create an initial knowledge base around the topic of Blockchain in a short timeframe, but we also achieved the ability to showcase a cloud-native Blockchain prototype. That way we created a real project experience with lessons learned, scenarios on how to operate and maintain the system and most relevant how to keep data secure and private. Furthermore, the acquisition of the expertise opened up discussions with partners on current shortcomings in operational topics, to the extent that both parties will work in conjunction to solve.

Upcoming, Bertelsmann, Arvato Systems, and further partners are going to explore together the possibilities of Blockchain in a more in-depth showcase. In the meantime, if you have any questions about Blockchain, Marcel Gocke from Arvato Systems is happy to help – just drop an Email.