IBM named top industrial Blockchain-as-a-Service provider
Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS), the cloud-based solution for blockchain development, is becoming increasingly significant as companies look to run new blockchain applications that are managed externally.
ABI Research has released a new Industrial BaaS Competitive Assessment, analysing and ranking six industrial BaaS vendors, Alibaba, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP.
According to the assessment, Microsoft and IBM are the clear leaders in the space.
Overall, ABI Research finds that IBM comes out on top, leading on both the innovation and the implementation front.
The firm's platform is open to a broad range of industrial verticals and has run a significant number of pilots and PoCs in the last five years, making it by far the most prominent BaaS provider in the space, the analysts state.
It also offers a broad range of platform choices and provides multi-cloud integration, above and beyond the other offerings.
Microsoft was ranked second, as a mainstream vendor, due to its resource-rich, flexible development and management infrastructure for its BaaS offering.
Oracle comes in at third place, also as a mainstream vendor, with good industrial ecosystem support and comprehensive management tools.
SAP, Amazon, and Alibaba have robust BaaS platforms, but with a more limited industrial play than the assessment leaders, ABI Research finds.
The Industrial Blockchain-as-a-Service competitive assessment examined companies offering BaaS solutions catering to industrial blockchain applications, including construction, pharmaceutical and life sciences, utilities, manufacturing, automotive, distribution, energy, and agriculture.
For this competitive assessment, innovation scores examined industrial POCs, industrial internet integration, ecosystem support, current roadmap, and geographic reach.
Implementation criteria focused on platform choice, developer resources, integration with legacy industrial, management tools, and pricing.
According to ABI Research, BaaS serves as a launchpad for broader blockchain technology adoption, effectively providing developers with a functional environment in which to build, test, and to take away the need for companies to build the infrastructure from scratch or host and manage it.
It is expected to become an increasingly important market as time goes on, but at present is still in its early stages.
ABI Research research director Michela Menting says, "Both the BaaS markets and the digitalisation of industrial markets are fairly nascent phenomena.
"Often, the intersection of blockchain and industrial service offerings are only within the remit of large technology providers with mature cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) offerings. As a result, only large companies play in the BaaS market, and all have varying levels of service offerings.
These findings are from ABI Research's Industrial BaaS Competitive Assessment report. This report is part of the company's Digital Security research service, which includes research, data, and ABI Insights.
