Microsoft Is Slowly Connecting Blockchain to Main Products

Three years ago, Microsoft Azure was the first to bring blockchain to the cloud.

The software giant has quietly been building bridges between its blockchain services and other, widely used infrastructure and platforms, such as Office 365 Outlook, SharePoint Online, Salesforce, Dynamics 365 CRM Online, SAP, and even Twitter, according to Matt Kerner, the general manager of Microsoft Azure.

The idea is to allow Microsoft customers to port their data from these platforms into the cloud, and from there onto a blockchain.

Why? In addition to the usually touted blockchain efficiencies, one of the less-discussed benefits of distributed ledger technology in a cloud environment like Azure, according to Microsoft, is that it amasses data from multiple companies in a standardized format at scale.

The company is integrating tools such as Microsoft Flow and Logic Apps - which offer hundreds of connectors to thousands of applications - into Azure Blockchain Workbench, a service it launched in May to make the creation of blockchain apps easier.

"What blockchain is doing is creating a multi-party business process that is moving out of email, phone calls, spreadsheets and into a single system with a single view on the data that all of the participants can rely upon and trust," he said.

Widening the lens, the ability to track items in real time and share things like IoT data using a blockchain has made global trade and supply chain a leading light in terms of domains to chase.

In terms of offering blockchain as a service, IBM has championed Hyperledger Composer for the past couple of years.

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