Kaleido, a cloud-based blockchain application and business platform, today announced the General Availability of Azure as a production cloud option in Kaleido’s Blockchain Business Cloud, as well as the option to select direct Azure billing.
Blockchain-based consortia can set up, manage, and operate native cross-cloud and hybrid decentralized enterprise ecosystems that span seamlessly across public and private cloud deployment options.
With this announcement, Kaleido now offers direct Azure SaaS marketplace billing and provides a production-grade service level agreement (SLA) across the decentralized network, externally audited and certified by industry standards such as ISO 27001, 270017, and 270018.
After sustained and growing interest from users, Azure has moved out of tech preview and is now available for production use on Kaleido. As enterprises look to accelerate their blockchain initiatives and expand their production networks in 2020, the business value of those networks increases as the number and diversity of its participants expand. Decentralized ownership of the network across multiple cloud providers and different geographic regions is a foundational enterprise blockchain requirement.
Kaleido’s Azure borderless blockchain capability enables an accelerated pace of adoption for diverse members of a blockchain business network or consortium who have standardized on Azure for their enterprise projects. With the addition of the new Azure billing option, consortia members who deploy their solution on Azure can now also set up payment directly through Azure for Kaleido’s Pay-as-You-Go plans.
“As clients are digitally transforming and moving the business operations to the cloud, we are focused on solving the challenges involved in forming these modern, more collaborative business ecosystems. With this announcement, Kaleido makes it easier for their business networks to grow and scale. Doubling down on our capabilities and integration into Azure and the Azure ecosystem brings their proven value to our users.”
– Steve Cerveny, Founder and CEO of Kaleido
Use-Cases
Today, entities running a consortium on Kaleido can have their participating members join on the cloud platform of their choice, or even on-premise behind their company firewall while participating seamlessly with other network members.
To enable their professionals on relevant to explore some concepts driving behind Central Bank Digital Currencies, The World Bank has teamed up with the IMF to create a token, dubbed “Learning Coin”. Employees can earn tokens by consuming curated content about digital currencies and blockchain.
“Microsoft continues to work deeply with the Ethereum community to advance enterprise blockchain applications. We’re happy to have Kaleido as part of Microsoft Azure, so enterprises can realize the business value of blockchain faster. With the new Azure billing option available on Kaleido, consortia members and other customers can manage billing directly through Azure, providing even greater flexibility and choice to Kaleido’s users.”
– Yorke Rhodes, principal program manager, Blockchain Engineering at Microsoft
The ability to select Azure is important for Australia-based Bartercard, which launched an innovative barter-trading network for businesses that run across cloud regions worldwide. They are expanding how they use blockchain to reimagine how digital currency is used for rewards.
“Cross-cloud and hybrid deployments aren’t always considered when initially developing a blockchain solution, but if you don’t plan for it upfront, it will cause challenges as you grow and scale your business network.”
– Mark Atkinson, Chief Technology Officer, Bartercard.
Qoin Association Limited also uses Kaleido to securely host and maintain the Qoin Blockchain, on which the Qoin digital currency operates. Qoin tokenizes the spare capacity of businesses which is then marketed to consumers via a wallet-based directory. Qoin, in association with Bartercard, has a combined merchant base of over 10,000 in Australia. As they expand their solution, cross-cloud capabilities will be an important part of how they grow and scale.