Oracle makes its Blockchain cloud service generally available

3 min read

After the first preview of its Blockchain Cloud Service at OpenWorld last October, Oracle has confirmed the general release and availability of its Blockchain platform in an official press release this Monday.

Before this release, Oracle’s pre-release version of Blockchain Cloud Service was being used by different businesses across the globe such as Arab Jordan Investment Bank, Certified Origins, Solar Site Design, CargoSmart, etc. These organizations say have seen a major difference in their business after adopting Oracle’s Blockchain as a service (BaaS).

For instance, Andrea Biagianti, CIO of Certified Origins (Italy based olive oil producer) mentions that the company wanted to trace the products (Bellucci EVOO) that they sell in the market of United States across the entire supply chain. Oracle’s Blockchain service helped the company by making the implementation and collaboration of all the included parties quite simple. It also provided them with a competitive edge over the others in the market.

“It adds a further level of transparency and information that is valuable for consumers looking for quality products and helps us to support the excellence of the small farms”, says Biagianti.

This Blockchain service will be of great help to organizations in three major ways. Firstly, it provides them with a development platform to build their own Blockchain networks. Secondly, it allows integration with Oracle SaaS, existing third-party applications, Oracle PaaS and other Blockchain networks to drive more reliable transactions. Lastly, clients or customers can program and test smart contracts to automate processes over the Blockchain distributed electronic ledger.

The new service is based on top of the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Fabric, which is a collaboration tool that comes with in-built infrastructure dependencies, REST proxy, and a number of monitoring and operation tools. It helps in building Blockchain based automated ledger such as smart contract technology.

A smart contract is an automation tool based on the Blockchain technology. It gets rid of the middleman in a business by enabling automatic exchange of money, property, etc, in a transparent and hassle-free manner.

According to Amit Zavery, executive vice president of Oracle Cloud Platform, “Blockchain promises to be one of the most transformative technologies of our generation”. This is quite true as Blockchain is helping transform businesses by making interactions more secure, efficient and cost-effective.

It has also made the future Blockchain implementations easier. This means that as the Hyperledger specification evolves and makes new updates, there is no need for the developers to rewrite the company-specific Blockchain applications.

Apart from that, new SaaS applications are being offered by Oracle for the Blockchain technology. These can be used in cases like track and trace, warranty and usage, cold chain, etc.

Organizations wanting to avail Oracle’s Blockchain services can either pay per usage (without a contract) or via a monthly, yearly or a multi-year deal. There is also a 30-day free trial of the cloud service that the Customers can sign up for.