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Blockchain and Enterprise DataOps Suit Up for the Enterprise

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Click to learn more about author Amit Satoor.

To gain a place on the enterprise roster, Blockchain should start by teaming with database and Data Management platforms . The two will need each other to win in the digital era. 

The promise of incorporating Blockchain in the enterprise includes better trust, traceability, and transparency while providing a single system of records and getting real-time insights from all transactions. As a single source of data that can be shared and replicated across many participants, and the data cannot be altered or modified, Blockchain has a unique set of Data Management attributes that are much needed in the enterprise.

A recent study revealed enterprise Blockchain is expected to provide transparency in the value chain, trustworthy shared data, and industry standardization. Respondents from hundreds of organizations engaged in Blockchain activities see Blockchain having future impact on improving corporate compliance (96%), becoming the system of trust (83%), and replacing operational supply chain contracts in 5 to 10 years (76%).

Blockchain advocates tout the technology’s ability to remove the need for intermediaries, decreasing cost, complexity, and risk. To fulfill these promises in the enterprise, Blockchain faces some major growing pains unless it can play well with enterprise Data Management. In most instances and true to its inception in the startup, entrepreneurial world, Blockchain is decentralized. To meet enterprise demands, Blockchain will need to be paired with database and Data Management operations solutions that lend it the scalability, performance, operational monitoring and reporting, and integration with existing workflows that it currently lacks.

5 Reasons Blockchain Needs a Data Management Solution

Blockchain performs well in early proof of concepts, but it must be team up with a cohesive, intelligent database infrastructure to ensure it is business ready. Traditional relational databases, Big Data storage systems, Real-time Analytics systems, distributed computing and processing systems, and Business Intelligence platforms will need work in harmony with enterprise Blockchain to extend applications and manage Blockchain-related data.

To prove the point, here are five main reasons traditional databases and enterprise Blockchains need each other:

Blockchains store limited data. Storage is not Blockchain’s strong suit. Due to the cost and performance demands, Blockchains store minimal data, typically a few kilobytes or less. The hash, or identifier, of the data is stored in Blockchain. The raw data, however, should be stored in a persistent, structured data store so that database analysts can query the data and most importantly—analyze it.

Businesses will realize better outcomes from analyzing a mix of Blockchain, business, operational and other data. Every enterprise Blockchain transaction should be available for analysis to support quick and data-driven decisions. To open Blockchain to analysis, the data will need to be stored in an advanced Data Management platform that provides a unified view of all transactional enterprise data—whether it resides in core systems or in the Blockchain. Without access to Blockchain data, enterprises will be creating another silo of data, which has proven again and again to be problematic.

Blockchain apps will need to interact with a reliable, single source of truth. The Blockchain data must be reliable, as it will be shared across multiple parties to fulfill their own business requirements. Business analysts in the financial market, for example, will want to treat transactions, or clusters of transactions as business objects. Regulatory officers at pharmaceutical companies must combine transactions with communication logs, manufacturing dates, material data, and other sources to perform automated governance and oversight. Risk managers at an oil company have to incorporate transactions from maintenance ledgers and from other documents into a company-wide view of onsite risk at all locations. The practical uses of this data across the entire enterprise is significant, which points back to why the data across all sources must be reliable.

Existing and future centralized applications must be integrated with Blockchain apps. Large numbers of enterprises support multiple apps written for a relational database with a SQL interface. These apps are integral to business and must continue to be available as new decentralized applications are developed on Blockchain.

Not all legacy workflows will be replaced. Similar to the familiar centralized SQL apps that keep businesses running smoothly, business workflows are entrenched within organization workforces. It will take months and possibly years to replace long-establish and known workflows. Blockchain will need to interact with existing systems for now and possibly years to come.

Ultimately, enterprises will want a single view for Blockchain transactions and other Data Management platforms, which means integrating Blockchain with the existing systems.

Learnings from Early Adopters

Before any organization moves Blockchain into production, it will need to:

  • Assess the subsystems that will support Blockchain’s compute, processing, analytics requirements.
  • Ensure that persistent storage is available
  • Review legal agreements with potential Blockchain participants

Most enterprise will want to create private Blockchains, with rules set by the organization, and read permissions given selectively to external entities, such as regulators. Small group participation is a good starting point, as Blockchains struggle with scalability. In the initial pilots, plans should include fewer transactions as performance could lag for large-scale volumes.

Even in these early days, Blockchain is gaining support across multiple industries. Financial services is especially interested in a safer workflow for transactions. In a January 2017 report, McKinsey estimated that Blockchain technology could save financial institutions between $80 and $110 billion over the next five years.

Beyond finance, Blockchain is helping the pharmaceutical industry create smart packaging products that prevent counterfeit products from entering the legitimate supply chain. The United States, Europe, and developing countries are plagued by counterfeiters introducing imposter drugs. By adding a unique identification to the medical packages that can be verified with an app, Blockchain is ensuring that care organizations, hospitals, and pharmacies distribute FDA-approved medicine.

Food distributors are similarly adopting Blockchain in their supply chain to track the path of tomatoes, bananas, beef, and other natural food goods as they travel from the farm to restaurants and grocery stores. Blockchain ensures that the goods reach each destination in their journey at the required time and meet required conditions, such as temperature, pH, and moisture.

Within enterprises, Blockchain is a great option for multiple parties who need to do transactions together. If they may need a safer, more reliable option for sharing documents, intellectual property, nonstandard currency, bills of material, Blockchain has much to offer. The sticking point will be integrating Blockchain into a more centralized enterprise environment.

Blockchain creates new challenges for Data Management: the creation, management, and coordination of multiple parallel data stores that are all collecting different data in different ways. A digital  platform with Cloud-based services is the best option for building a winning team roster and merging the fast-moving Blockchain data with business data so that business can keep pace in the digital era.

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