Blockchain

IBM to Open Blockchain ‘Garages’ in Singapore, Tokyo, NY and London

Tech giant IBM has announced that it will open so called IBM Garages in Singapore, Tokyo, New York City and London where its experts will be able to collaborate with local developers on the design and implementation of blockchain technology for business.

The initiative is part of IBM’s wider plan of pushing blockchain usage for businesses and came simultaneously as the corporation had unveiled its latest suite of services entirely dedicated to facilitating the development, design and implementation of blockchain technology for developers and businesses.

Blockchain-as-a-Service

IBM’s new blockchain services aim to enable developers to access fully integrated DevOps tools for creating, deploying, running and monitoring blockchain applications on the IBM Cloud.

IBM’s capabilities include:

Pluggable architecture to allow developers to use software modules (consensus module for example) that best suits their needs.
A new consensus algorithm developed by IBM Research tailored to specific blockchain use cases.
Advanced identity management built with the latest cryptography.
Smart contracts that can be written in popular programming languages such as Java or Golang and executed in containers.
Fine-grained privacy and confidentiality control allows authors of smart contracts to precisely specify both who can view them and who can execute them.

“IBM’s vision for making blockchain a powerful new business solution across multiple industries is becoming a reality as our clients begin piloting innovative new code, services and z Systems optimized for distributed ledgers,” Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President, IBM Research, said in a statement.

“These advancements are making it easier for developers to move from understanding the potential of blockchain, to actually using it to change their business processes in powerful new ways.”

IBM is working with a number of global partners including London Stock Exchange Group and the Finnish business development organization Kouvola Innovation on diverse projects involving distributed ledger technology.

With London Stock Exchange Group, IBM is working on an open blockchain technology dedicated to helping the financial institution manage risk and bring additional transparency to global financial markets.

With Kouvola Innovation, IBM is working on designing a new process that would transform logistics value chains into a more seamless process.

Hyperledger Project

IBM, a founding member of the Hyperledger Project, has donated nearly 44,000 lines of code to the initiative with the purpose of helping developers easily build secure distributed ledgers that can be used to exchange most anything of value.

The Hyperledger Project, a collaborative effort triggered in December 2015, intends to develop an enterprise grade, open source distributed ledger framework that would support business transactions.

Alongside IBM, other founding members include ANZ Bank, Cisco, Digital Asset Holdings, Eris Industries, Intel, JP Morgan, R3, State Street and SWIFT.

Digital Asset Holdings, a firm headed by JP Morgan’s ex-banker Blythe Masters specializing in distributed ledger technology for the financial services industry, has contributed the Hyperledger mark as well as its enterprise grade code and developer resources.

R3, another fintech firm developing blockchain technology, has contributed a new financial transaction architectural framework designed to specifically meet the requirements of its global bank members and other financial institutions.

Featured image: New Blockchain Services on the IBM Cloud, via IBM