Sept/Oct 19 - ChannelVision Magazine

Indeed, real-world adoption of blockchain technology by end-user or- ganizations didn’t change significantly throughout 2018, said Csilla Zsigri, 451 senior analysts. “The enterprise blockchain market has seen tremendous activity in 2018; however, production use of the technol- ogy is still in the single digits,” said Zsigri. Overall production use grew from 4 percent to 5 percent between Q4 2017 and Q4 2018, show 451 surveys. “This should not come as a surprise, given that mainstream use of block- chain technology will need more than just running successful proofs of con- cept or pilot projects,” continued Zsigri, “it requires a mindset shift in terms of how we do business and the under- standing of how it fits within the broader digital transformation landscape.” On the other hand, the number of respondents at least considering the use of blockchain technology has increased from 43 percent to 50 per- cent, while those actively planning to implement or implementing has gone from 26 percent to 29 percent. In other words, interest and awareness of this still-emerging technology at least exists among enterprises. Interest is especially high in Asia-Pacific and Latin America, where 60 percent and 59 percent of survey respondents re- ported that they are at least consider- ing the use of blockchain technology. IT and communications service pro- viders are a bit more optimistic about the technology’s near term. Among the MSPs, public cloud providers, telcos, system in- tegrators, colocations providers and SaaS vendors surveyed by 451, usage percent- age is nearly three times higher than enter- prises. Nearly half of those service provid- ers expect to be utilizing blockchain within the next 12 months. In terms of how enterprises are employ- ing DLT, the tracking and tracing of assets was the top use case among those sur- veyed by Zsigri and her team, but several other use cases were close behind, speak- ing to the wide reach of the technology. “These primary use cases are the foundation for more complex use cases, such as supply chain manage- ment,” Zsigri explained. “Supply chain- related use cases are gathering a lot of attention for a wide range of products across industries (e.g., food items, lux- ury goods, prescription drugs, vehicle parts) for authenticity, efficiency and transparency reasons, among others.” Leading verticals include finance, not surprisingly considering Block- chains early history with cryptocurren- cy; healthcare; and the mobility sector. But it’s not just big business. Mid-sized outdoor apparel company FjallRaven is using blockchain for a viral back-to- school marketing campaign. Players obtain “Fox Coin” for sharing a digital backpack. The coins are grabbed using the augmented reality on their smart- phones. The more shares, the more coins you enter toward the giveaway. For the IT and MSP channels, mean- while, the opportunities to offer services also may be closer than many expect. Zsigri, for one, points to an expand- ing market of blockchain-as-as-service providers, which holds the promise of easing adoption and delivery as start- ups and incumbents look to hide infra- structure complexity, improve cost and provide customers with choice. o Blockchain Boom? B ack in 2017, when Bitcoin set off its initial frenzy, hundreds of proof-of-concept projects were conducted for other applications of blockchain, the distributed ledger technology (DLT) behind Bitcoin. A few years later, these projects have moved into production a bit slower than the hype suggested, show findings from 451 Research. By Martin Vilaboy EMERGENT Schools Have Rapidly Added Wi-Fi to Classrooms Reas Source: C Si Competi Ve In- t Declining area Ho Curr Source Drones ( Internet of analycti Data Center Physical Capacity Under Construction by Region Source: IHS Markit Source: EducationSuperHighway 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 1H19 North America EMEA Asia Pacific CALA 2H19 1H20 Capacity (sq ft. M) 2013 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 2014 2015 2016 2017 Schools reporting sufficent Wi-Fi in classrooms Percent Q: Which of the following are primary use cases for blockchain/distributed ledger technology at your organization? Source: 451 Research Other Risk management and legal/regulatory compliance Digital identity and certified claims Asset transfer and monetization Trusted sharing and reconciliation of data Asset ‘track and trace’ 51% 48% 48% 48% 44% 5% 12 Channel Vision | September - October, 2019