CGI announces the establishment of a blockchain sandbox lab to create new trade finance applications using various blockchain platforms including Ripple

Canada’s CGI Group has launched a blockchain lab to help its trade finance and supply chain clients apply the efficiencies of blockchain to new and existing products.

The lab was officially launched at the Sibos financial conference in Geneva. The company is currently accelerating its use of Ripple’s distributed ledger solution. Just last year, CGI also entered into a partnership with Ripple at the Sibos conference. The newly established blockchain lab will soon explore the benefits of this technology for trade finance more widely.

As part of this digital sandbox offering, the company will let customers experiment with how various blockchains interact with its new digital smart gateway, which allows for a wide range of supply chain messaging.

The lab’s goal is to create a library of blockchain APIs that all connect back to traditional platforms, said Kittredge Carswell, vice president of consulting at CGI and one of the lab’s three project leaders.

Carswell said:

“With this lab, the idea is to be able to bring proof of concepts, pilot development solutions, application layer and blockchain solutions, while accelerating the development of commercial products.”

The Trade Innovation Lab is a three-tiered ‘sandbox’ that starts with a platform that can accommodate Ethereum, BigchainDB, Ripple, Corda and Eris Industries, then works with CGI blockchain developers through the smart gateway to create messaging workflows and can be integrated into new blockchain applications through APIs.

CGI had revenue of $10 billion in 2015. According to Carswell, one of the company’s biggest services is hosting similar applications for banking clients that were created with more traditional technologies. The lab’s goal is to create new blockchain applications that can streamline trade finance transactions between CGI clients and other companies.

Carswell said CGI’s current clients include some members of the R3cev banking consortium and the Hyperledger business blockchain alliance.

Carswell said many of the clients were already creating blockchain proofs of concepts and "wanted those to be linked together."

Building Blocks

CGI has been developing the lab since earlier this year, and while CGI has already achieved numerous milestones on its road to blockchain integration, this lab marks the culmination of those milestones.

In February, CGI helped coordinate Standard Chartered’s integration with Ripple, and a few months later, CGI integrated its own core product, a smart gateway for fast transactions, with Ripple.

Yesterday, CGI announced that it is now managing its own Ripple validator node, becoming the third company to do so after MIT and Microsoft.

Caswell said the company’s blockchain work was driven by concerns and interest in blockchain’s potential to disrupt the trade finance sector. Caswell said CGI currently has 65,000 employees, of which 8,000 are engaged in trade finance.

He concluded:

“We want to ride this wave, not be knocked over by it.”