Oracle, in its latest step to move its franchise to cloud services, launched its Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service July 16 to general availability. It has been in the development stage for more than a year.
The service allows organizations to build blockchain networks to enable more secure and efficient transactions and to track goods through supply chains on a global scale.
The use of blockchain’s digital ledger is a growing trend because it offers a new level of security in business transactions that wasn’t available previously. With security at the top of everybody’s list for finding new solutions fast, this idea has caused a lot of interest in a short period of time.
The high-level is this: Blockchain is all about trust—namely, trust among vetted partners in business transactions. Blockchain is a type of data structure that enables identifying and tracking transactions digitally and sharing this information across a distributed network of computers, creating a trusted network.
It’s All About Peer-to-Peer Networks
Blockchain originally was designed to be the underlying peer-to-peer network support structure for transactions made in Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency. Constantly growing as “completed” blocks (the most recent transactions) are recorded and added to it in chronological order, a blockchain allows market participants to keep track of digital currency transactions without central record-keeping. Each node (a computer connected to the network) gets a copy of the blockchain, which is downloaded automatically.
Early adopters of Oracle’s blockchain cloud service include Arab Jordan Investment Bank, CargoSmart, Certified Origins, Indian Oil, Intelipost, M2O, Neurosoft, Nigeria Customs, Sofbang and Solar Site Design.
Oracle claims its blockchain cloud service is the only one on the market that provides users with a development platform to build their own networks. Thus, it also enables direct integration with Oracle SaaS and third-party applications enterprises already use, as well as other blockchain networks and Oracle PaaS services.
Oracle’s blockchain platform is built on top of the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Fabric and pre-assembled with identity management, infrastructure services and REST proxy, expediting the setup and continuous development process.
Includes Multi-Data Center Disaster Recovery
Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service is a managed cloud service backed by a 99.95 percent availability SLA, and includes built-in high availability, as well as continuous ledger backup and restore capabilities that can enable multi-data center disaster recovery. It offers expansive integrations with Oracle Cloud Platform for API management, application integration and application development.
Additionally, Oracle regularly releases new applications to use blockchain technology for common use cases, such as track and trace, provenance identification, warranty and usage, and cold chain. The plug-and-play ability with Oracle and third-party applications results in faster integration with diverse systems of record, improving time to market, the company claims.
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