Blockchain unchained

Succeeding in today’s evolving business environment means constantly innovating new ideas. Staying in the same place simply doesn’t work.  Many companies are investigating Blockchain technologies to power new innovations.

Developers in all industries, especially financial services, are now exploring modifications to applications based on Blockchain technology to create a faster, more secure and transparent way to process and manage data. However, some enterprises are quickly realizing that generic infrastructure and public clouds alone might not make the best environment for developing and testing new applications. Common problems include availability, performance, security and scalability. Without proper testing, enterprises cannot confidently deploy new applications, especially for use with sensitive data, such as financial and healthcare information.

The HPE Mission Critical Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Lab is now available to customers as a secure hosted environment where they can try out their applications to see how they may work using Blockchain and distributed ledger technology. The HPE Lab is developed in partnership with R3, one of the most talked about firms in the Blockchain technology world. Developers can work on their applications and interact closely with HPE engineering teams to influence features of the environment. The Mission Critical DLT solution runs on the HPE Integrity NonStop platform, which runs two out of every three credit-card transactions in the world, and provides the security needed for even the most sensitive data transactions.

Industries, especially financial services are investigating an investment in Blockchain

CB Insights found that 40 percent of all fintech investments by venture capital firms and banks are in blockchain startups. Based on the results, this rapid pace is not surprising Santander InnoVentures predicts Blockchain will reduce banks infrastructure costs by between $15 billion and $20 billion by 2022. Additionally, DLT enables every party involved bank, consumer, lending company to have an identical copy of the data, which has many use cases throughout the financial services industry.

Blockchain will fundamentally change business

The technology offers the essentials for any transaction trust and a single set of facts. Most industries are still in experimental mode, trying out Blockchain related technologies like DLT, to learn the technology and apply use cases. Any industry, including retail, manufacturing and healthcare that uses a general ledger for transactions can improve its process with Blockchain due to its decentralized network structure. Because DLT distributes the ledger, all parties that need the information have access to the data, while those who should not see the data are unable to access the record. Because NonStop systems are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, enterprises always have the data needed to keep their business running.

HPE expects Blockchain to fundamentally change how business is transacted. Because blockchain lowers the barrier to entry, new companies increase the competition, which drives innovation. Blockchain also lowers operating costs, improves efficiency and reduces transaction cycle times. As Blockchain continues to evolve, DLT will bring to life new business models that we cannot imagine today, and it will shift how business is done.

In financial services, it’s easy to see various use cases and applications, where banks have traditionally held the ledgers for all transactions. A simple example might be mortgage processing, where the buyer is first qualified for the loan, an offer is made and accepted on a house, a contract is signed for purchase, money is kept in escrow, the title is researched and cleared, insurance is purchased by the buyer, etc.  So that each step in the process is captured and on record for all interested parties to be aware of where the transaction stands until the house keys are finally turned over to the new buyer.

Mission Critical DLT Lab developed in partnership with R3

The proof of concept (PoC) HPE Mission Critical DLT Lab integrates R3’s Corda Enterprise product to provide a fault-tolerant DLT for enterprise companies. While the Mission Critical DLT Lab does not provide the ability for companies to access prebuilt blockchain applications, enterprises can use the environment to integrate their applications with both Corda and NonStop.

Enterprises participating in the Mission Critical DLT Lab will have access to direct advice from HPE NonStop engineering teams, who will personally answer questions and assist with problems.  Participants’ feedback will in turn help influence the final product environment and improve product requirements. Mission Critical DLT Lab participants can create innovative applications to disrupt their own industry while also impacting the future of Blockchain technology.