At a NASSCOM-hosted event earlier this year, I moderated a roundtable discussion on “Blockchain: Looking beyond the hype” among executives from 20+ GICs. The discussion quickly elevated from the “what” to the “how and how not” to do blockchain initiatives.
Here are some of the key take-aways from the session, in part sparked by discussions on some of our blockchain research.
Blockchain is Inching Closer to Prime Time
Blockchain has crossed the chasm: With the definitive number of live deployments and successful PoCs, we believe that the early adopters will be able to demonstrate early results by year’s end. Because timelines for technology evolution have compressed, we also expect a wave of fast followers will invest in this space.
GICs are Taking the Lead
GICs’ innovation can transform them into Global Capability Centers (GCCs): GICs are leading blockchain initiatives, from education, evaluation, use-case design, and PoCs to live deployments. They are also externalizing the technology solutions to create newer business and revenue models, and driving blockchain adoption at speed and scale. And their R&D investments are extending beyond live blockchain deployments to patent filings to retain competitive advantage.
Building a business case: GICs are researching every possible use of blockchain in their industry. We are seeing GICs helping enterprises across a variety of use cases in insurance, capital markets, banking, supply chain, education, and technology – and one leading financial services GIC prioritized four use cases from a long list of more than 40. A framework, like the one we recently published, will help firms prioritize business use cases that are ripe for blockchain adoption.
GICs and the ecosystem: Blockchain adoption requires significant orchestration among governments, regulators, technology vendors, enterprises, startups, and customers to create a win-win environment for all. GICs are not just consortium and forum participants; they are highly active contributors to the advancement of blockchain technology maturity.
Talent is not a huge roadblock: Leading adopters have started by building a core blockchain team that invests its time in understanding the ecosystem, undergoing training, and exploring multiple use cases. Lead steers we’ve spoken with stated that re-skilling efforts to build a blockchain developer pool have not been the uphill battle that leading blockchain consulting firms hypothesized. They’ve approached re-skilling by driving blockchain awareness to a broader group in the firm, and then identifying a pool of talent with adjacent skills, e.g., Angular JS developers to be trained on solidity, for the first wave of training. More developers join these teams as they scale up. Enterprises are conducting a series of hackathons to tap into the talent pool – both in the GICs and the extended ecosystem – and provide on the job training opportunities.
On the Technology Front
Evolution of the enterprise blockchain technology stack: Enterprises are taking a fundamentally different approach than the public or cryptocurrency related initiatives in building their blockchain technology stacks. Blockchain-as-a-service vendors have helped manage the complexities of the blockchain stack for early trials and pilot stage activities. However, early stage trials that did not plan for the blockchain technology stack for the live deployment phase have found it difficult to scale up their pilots. Node-level identity and access management, interoperability, quality assurance for smart contracts, and current scalability limitations of existing blockchain consensus mechanisms and transaction validation protocols are some of the key challenges highlighted by early adopters.
Sidechains are a key feature of the enterprise blockchain tech stack, not limited to cryptocurrencies: Several enterprises are solving the data privacy issues by creating both off-chain and side-chain applications that can then write final-hash on the blockchain network. This unique approach can accelerate blockchain adoption for specific use cases. However, interoperability on different blockchain platforms is a key challenge.
With all this, there should be little doubt that GICs are quickly evolving into global capability centers that further the digital transformation agenda for the enterprise.
As we continue studying enterprises’ and GICs’ blockchain journeys, we’d love to hear about yours. Please share it with me on [email protected].
And please participate in our ongoing GIC Digital Maturity Pinnacle Model™ survey to learn more about successful GICs’ digital journeys and see how your GIC compares.
