AWS Partners with ConsenSys to Simplify Enterprise Blockchains

Cloud computing giant Amazon Web Services is partnering with the ethereum design studio Consensys to make enterprise blockchains easier and faster to deploy.

Announced Tuesday at Consensus 2018, the two firms' business blockchain cloud service, Kaleido, aims to smooth the onboarding process for enterprise consortium members - a major challenge in the space - while simplifying the operation of private blockchain networks.

AWS is no stranger to the space, having announced back in 2016 that it would start working with blockchain startups, offering dedicated technical support and infrastructure for the firms involved.

More recently, in April of this year AWS unveiled a new service for launching out-of-the-box blockchain networks for the ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric protocols.

"Working with ConsenSys will allow us to further understand customer needs and help accelerate their blockchain efforts," Yanchyshyn said.

Michael Dickson, the enterprise blockchain business development lead at ConsenSys, said Microsoft's early blockchain-as-a-service was essentially a set of scripts to enable users to quickly stand up a sandbox environment for blockchains.

Stepping back, enterprises looking to participate in some kind of shared blockchain architecture face an array of physical networking and performance challenges around connecting their respective data centers.

The AWS-Consensys venture also brings a step closer the goal, increasingly shared by enterprise blockchain professionals, of connecting their private blockchains to the ethereum mainnet.

The platform offers a "State relay" between a private chain that a group of enterprises can set up and operate and a public blockchain.

Kaleido allows users to switch between several consensus algorithms and choose between two packages: Geth, which is the most popular client for the ethereum blockchain app platform; and Quorum, the enterprise version of ethereum developed by JPMorgan Chase.