Google Cloud announced that it will provide blockchain testing services and officially enter the BaaS market

Today, major international banking giants are pursuing an emerging financial technology - blockchain, and the technology industry is naturally scrambling to provide support for this invisible technology. After Microsoft, IBM and Amazon established blockchain technology platforms last year and this year, Google Cloud Services also announced that it will provide blockchain testing services for banks.

According to Bloomberg, Google has successfully included the Global Consulting Group into its "Blockchain Technology Platform Partner Program". In a statement on Friday, GFT said that its client Royal Bank of Scotland Group has adopted Google servers in a test of a new blockchain application (clearing and settlement). In addition, Google Cloud Services will also provide technical testing for other banking customers of GFT.

Blockchain is the underlying technology of Bitcoin, which is not only used for Bitcoin, but also can be applied to other industries. When banks and other financial institutions can no longer rely on third parties, directly connect consumers and suppliers, and can automatically settle and achieve decentralization, their overall security factor will undoubtedly rise to a higher level. Therefore, "Blockchain +" will have a significant impact on the industry, and even a disruptive change.

However, since blockchain technology development, research and testing involve multiple systems, time and money cost issues will hinder the breakthrough of blockchain technology. However, by using cloud platforms to build a test environment, the above problems will be solved. At the same time, the distributed storage characteristics of blockchain will also bring profound changes to cloud services themselves. The integration of the two technologies will accelerate the maturity of blockchain technology and promote the expansion of blockchain from the financial industry to more fields.

The combination of the two has also created a new market - the Blockchain-as-a-Service market (BaaS).

IBM and Microsoft have so far been the most active in rolling out special developer tools for blockchain, and they have also been inviting banks and startups to test the new database technology in their data centers.

As early as November 2015, Microsoft launched a cloud-based blockchain technology platform in collaboration with New York startup ConsensYs. The platform aims to help financial institutions use encryption technologies related to digital currencies such as Bitcoin at a lower price. The world's four largest accounting firms are currently users of the service. In August this year, Microsoft's blockchain service was officially opened to Azure cloud platform users, allowing developers to create a blockchain test environment on the cloud platform in the simplest and most efficient way.

Another large cloud service provider, IBM, announced the launch of a blockchain service platform in February this year. It has since launched blockchain projects such as the "shadow chain" Shadowchain that can improve the lending process, identity authentication systems, and cloud security services. It also announced that it expects to launch the largest commercial blockchain project in history in September.

Of course, Amazon, which has the largest market share in cloud services, is not far behind. In May this year, it chose to cooperate with Digital Currency Group (DCG) to provide enterprises with a blockchain experimental environment. During the cooperation process, AWS will provide dedicated cloud infrastructure and technical support for these projects. Many companies, including DCG, will cooperate with the platform to explore and test different blockchain applications.

According to a World Economic Forum survey report, 10% of global GDP information will be stored using blockchain technology by 2025. Perhaps in the next few years, as the basic platform for weaving this financial infrastructure, the infrastructure of enterprise-level blockchain will become very important.

Now, Google has officially entered the BaaS market. It is clear that in addition to Microsoft, Amazon and IBM, Google is also ready to turn the BaaS platform into an important source of profit.