Kicking off Microsoft Envision, Executive Vice President for Business Development Peggy Johnson announced a new strategic partnership with the financial industry consortium R3 to help move blockchain technology into reality for the financial services industry.
Blockchain technologies, first popularized by Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, has the potential to fundamentally change how big banks do business, with Johnson writing the following on the Microsoft blog announcing the initiative:
Bringing together resources from across the company, this partnership empowers R3’s members with intelligent technology for faster experimentation, technical agility and accelerated learning. Member banks will use our cloud platform, Microsoft Azure, and have access to our expanding network of more than 45 partner Blockchain-as-a-Service solution providers for development and testing.
The company plans to help the 40 member banks of R3 implement a Microsoft blockchain-based system in order to help process transactions. This will allow for a much-needed update to the highly regulated and integrated global banking system. The technology will reside in Azure, allowing for what they are calling Blockchain-as-a-Service from various different solution providers. This is yet another move by Microsoft to help bridge the open source world with big enterprise where they have dominated for the past two decades.
Source: Microsoft Blog | Image Microsoft via Shutterstock