Editorial

Did Amazon just totally change the Blockchain game?

Amazon Managed Blockchain will also be able to scale to support “thousands of applications and millions of transactions” using popular open source frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum – so this is likely to be a pretty significant entry into the global Blockchain market

Posted 1 May 2019 by Gary Flood


Amazon’s cloud arm, Amazon Web Services, has just released something it’s calling Amazon Managed Blockchain – which it is positioning as “a fully managed service that makes it easy to create and manage scalable blockchain networks”.

‘Blockchain Technology’ on Flickr by surya s (c) All Rights Reserved

Customers who want to allow multiple parties to execute transactions and maintain a cryptographically verifiable record of them without the need for a trusted, central authority can now quickly setup a blockchain network spanning multiple AWS accounts with a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, it is also claiming.

Amazon Managed Blockchain will also be able to scale to support “thousands of applications and millions of transactions” using popular open source frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum – so this is likely to be a pretty significant entry into the global Blockchain market.

Why? As AWS itself says, customers typically create blockchain networks using frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum, but setting up the networks using these frameworks can be difficult and time consuming, complexity that is often the reason many customers typically need the help of expensive consultants to make blockchain work.

But if Amazon Managed Blockchain truly is a fully managed Blockchain service that makes it easy and cost effective to create and manage secure Blockchain networks that can scale to support thousands of applications running millions of transactions, then maybe the game really has changed.

“Customers want to use blockchain frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum to create blockchain networks so they can conduct business quickly, with an immutable record of transactions, but without the need for a centralised authority. However, they find these frameworks difficult to install, configure, and manage,” said Rahul Pathak, General Manager, Amazon Managed Blockchain at AWS.

“Amazon Managed Blockchain takes care of provisioning nodes, setting up the network, managing certificates and security, and scaling the network. Customers can now get a functioning blockchain network set up quickly and easily, so they can focus on application development instead of keeping a blockchain network up and running.”

Amazon Managed Blockchain is available immediately in just part of the US for now, but will expand to additional regions in the coming year, states the company, with partners who will sell it including AT&T Business and Accenture, and early users Nestlé and Singapore Exchange Limited.