Microsoft is working on project to add middleware to blockchains
Microsoft has started a project called ‘Project Bletchley’ with the aim of offering ‘blockchains as a service’. With this, Microsoft is expanding blockchain technology with tools that allow users to link certain existing services to or make them work with a blockchain.
One of the benefits for companies would be that it would be easier to set up consortium blockchains for only members of that consortium. In this way, consortia can more quickly and easily register contracts and the like, writes Marley Gray of Microsoft on the Azure blog. Gray also wrote the white paper behind the project. With Project Bletchley, Azure forms the web for the relevant blockchain and Azure functions as a cloud platform where distributed applications can be built and delivered.
The entire project is open to various blockchain protocols such as Hyperledger and Ethereum. Microsoft will add others as more are developed. Currently, the R3 banking consortium, among others, is using the Azure platform to experiment with blockchains.
In Project Bletchley, Microsoft introduces two concepts. The first is blockchain middleware. To do this, the blockchain must offer core services in the cloud, such as identity management in addition to certain data and information services such as analytics and machine learning, Gray writes. This uses the advantages that a blockchain offers, such as worldwide distribution and therefore unchangeable transactions.
Gray sees the cryptlets as a new building block within blockchain technology. It must ensure secure transactions and communication between Azure, middleware and technology of the user or customer. Sometimes additional information is required to conclude a transaction or contract. The cryptlet can then add the extra information, such as time and date. In this way, different techniques can be linked together and still use the security that a blockchain can offer.
The first pilots of the project are expected at the end of the summer. The project’s name is derived from Bletchley Park, where British intelligence codebreakers resided during World War II.
Source: Azure GitHub