IBM has prosperously introduced a blockchain platform from its data center in Melbourne that enables customers to operate their programs in the cloud of the company thereby gaining the conditions pertaining to data authority. As per the opinion of Rupert Colchester, head of IBM’s blockchain and consulting practice leader in Australia and New Zealand, the primary reason of creation of a substitute location is due to their redundancy and availability. This platform would be available to be accessed from the data center in Sydney by the end of the next month.
Rupert Colchester stated to ZDNet that, “By its very nature, it’s a distributed ledger technology so often ledgers are running in different locations and the demand for two is through clients and customers in this geography wanting to have high availability in the event of downtime and the like.”
The IBM Blockchain Platform is dependent on the Hyperledger Fabric which is the Linux Foundation’s open source blockchain project. As the physical infrastructure is obtainable in the country, the data would never go beyond the physical boundary, which Colchester believes that would deliver adequate security for highly monitored applications specifically for the services pertaining to finance and government organizations.
However, Big Blue has already created such platform and made it available from its data centers in London, Frankfurt, Toronto, Dallas, Tokyo and Sao Paolo which Colchester sees as a significant development in the field of production grade projects worldwide, including that in Australia.
Rupert Colchester further stated that “Customers who are deploying blockchain applications have reached a maturity of projects that require the data to be stored in Australia.”
Explaining it further, Colchester commented that, “Obviously Australia is unique, as is every country … in the case of Australia, the whole supply chain is a huge area of interest, discussion, and activity. How can one track food, right from its inception in a farm all the way through to retailers to prove the providence. That is just one simple supply chain that is particularly active, there are others around the trade of high value goods, or providing transparency down to shipment or logistics companies. In the world of financial services … the reality is financial services was probably always the forerunner in blockchain applications in business, exploring the potential applications on the likes of digital identity and tracking financial trade.”
Colchester added that blockchain is “pretty much active” across all industries that prevail within Australia. He also stated that organizations in Australia are catching up with the blockchain application at a rapid rate. He stated that “I do very few education sessions nowadays, but there is a lot of discussions whereby clients are trying to understand how best they can apply it to the business problems they have. The nature of having this platform in Australia really facilitates the quick creation of blockchain networks here in Australia.”
Colchester, stressing on the potential believes that IBM’s significant investment in Australia itself justifies the company’s efficiency level.
He further explained that “While Australia has not been particularly high on the innovation index globally … what it does reflect from a blockchain perspective — it’s a very interesting country because it’s small enough to make things doable, people know each other well, it’s a very strong ecosystem of relationships in the business world across the economy. But large enough to … provide revenue opportunities for companies that are based here.”
During last August, CSIRO’s Data61 had announced that it would collaborate with Herbert Smith Freehills to create a smart legal contract network which would be based on the blockchain technology and would be developed on the IBM Blockchain. The Australian National Blockchain is predicted to allow organizations to administer a contract’s life cycle digitally that would begin from negotiation to signing and the same would continue during the life of the agreement.
Speaking about the ANB’s initiative and the swiftness with which the project would go forward, Colchester also stated that “It provides a potential for Australian companies to store contracts in the blockchain network running within Australia only — no data passing outside of this country. It will be able to get going really quickly and provide the necessary security around it. Security that can’t be achieved with some other blockchain solutions across the cloud.”
