{"id":34427,"date":"2018-04-23T11:13:10","date_gmt":"2018-04-23T11:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=0b033dd6b3db469fd54e06d220fa5341"},"modified":"2018-04-23T11:13:10","modified_gmt":"2018-04-23T11:13:10","slug":"aws-joins-the-blockchain-bandwagon-targeting-healthcare-and-finance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/aws-joins-the-blockchain-bandwagon-targeting-healthcare-and-finance\/","title":{"rendered":"AWS joins the blockchain bandwagon, targeting healthcare and finance"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Keumars Afifi-Sabet<\/a><\/span>
\n Joe Curtis<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
23 Apr, 2018<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Amazon Web Services (AWS) today joined its rivals in releasing a blockchain service, half a year after its CEO cited a lack of “practical use cases” for the technology.<\/p>\n

Basing its blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) on Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric networks, AWS wants to give developers the tools they need to develop their own blockchain apps.<\/p>\n

“Some of the people that I talk to see blockchains as the foundation of a new monetary system and a way to facilitate international payments,” said AWS vice president and chief evangelist Jeff Barr in a blog post<\/a>. “Others see blockchains as a distributed ledger and immutable data source that can be applied to logistics, supply chain, land registration, crowdfunding, and other use cases.<\/p>\n

“Either way, it is clear that there are a lot of intriguing possibilities and we are working to help our customers use this technology more effectively.”<\/p>\n

AWS’s\u00a0Blockchain Templates<\/a>\u00a0allows users to quickly launch either a public or private Ethereum network, or a private Hyperledger Fabric network, with the templates creating and configuring all the AWS resources needed based on the cloud giant’s pay-as-you-go pricing structure.<\/p>\n

The platform has been adopted by a number of companies in sectors such as healthcare and finance, including mobile operator T-Mobile and Guidewire, an insurance platform provider.<\/p>\n

T-Mobile is building an identity and authentication platform with Sawtooth, a technology from the Intel Hyperledger project, while Guidewire is using blockchain to auto-approve insurance claims and trigger payments.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nAWS’s push into the blockchain market sees it follow in the footsteps of rivals including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP, which have all deployed versions of this technology.<\/p>\n

Oracle, for example, launched its Blockchain Cloud Service at its OpenWorld conference in October last year to boost the competitiveness of its cloud services against\u00a0IBM<\/a>\u00a0and Microsoft’s packages.<\/p>\n

However, AWS’s decision to follow suit marks a significant shift in strategy, given that its CEO, Andy Jassy, dismissed the potential of blockchain at\u00a0AWS’s re:Invent 2017<\/a>\u00a0conference in November.<\/p>\n

“We don’t yet see a lot of practical use cases for using blockchain that are much broader than using a distributed ledger,” he said in a press Q&A.\u00a0“We don’t build technology because we think it’s cool, we build it when we think it’s the best way of solving a customer’s problem.\u00a0Ledger capabilities to me are much more limited than they should be.”<\/p>\n

Cloud Pro<\/em> has approached AWS for comment on why it has shifted direction on blockchain.<\/p>\n

Picture: Shutterstock<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Keumars Afifi-Sabet
\n Joe Curtis<\/p>\n

23 Apr, 2018 <\/p>\n

Amazon Web Services (AWS) today joined its rivals in releasing a blockchain service, half a year after its CEO cited a lack of “practical use cases” for the technology.
\nB…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":433,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/433"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34427"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34536,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34427\/revisions\/34536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}