What exactly does Microsoft's blockchain platform do?

Editor's note : Since Microsoft first announced its partnership with Ethereum, its Azure blockchain platform has continued to add new members: ConsenSys, Ripple, Eris Industries, CoinPrism, Factom, BitPay, Manifold Technology, LibraTax and Emercoin. Recently, Multichain and Netki were added. Netizens have expressed confusion. What on earth is Microsoft trying to do? What "dish" can this "hodgepodge" finally cook? Let's listen to what Microsoft has to say.

Microsoft began testing the waters with Bitcoin in late 2014, but the tech giant’s recent moves suggest it wants to become a major player in the emerging market for technology solutions based on blockchain technology.

Since Microsoft announced the opening of its Azure cloud computing platform to the blockchain field, its partners have continued to join. Microsoft's Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) solution is a "sandbox" where its partners can interact with different technologies, from smart contracts to blockchain-based tax filing services, in this low-risk environment provided by Microsoft.

From initially cooperating with startups with good venture capital support and certain market value such as Ethereum and BitPay, Microsoft has continuously updated its partners, no longer with well-known companies in the Bitcoin or blockchain industry, but with some unknown small partners such as Emercoin.

In October, Microsoft formed a partnership with BitPay, a $32 million bitcoin startup, and Factom, a blockchain record-keeping service. Factom is best known for its recently stalled land and property registry project with Honduras.

Since then, Microsoft has been supporting various forms of blockchain services companies, most recently adding Multichain.

According to Marley Gray, Microsoft’s director of technical strategy, there will be no shortage of new blockchain service providers on its Azure platform, which is designed for development and testing.

Gray told CoinDesk:

“We want, or our customers want, access to every blockchain. Maybe someone with an innovative idea forks the Bitcoin blockchain and makes a new blockchain, and people want to try out those new blockchains. That’s what we do, we open up to all blockchain services, even the smaller players.”

Gray said that by this spring, the Azure BaaS platform will be expanded into a "certified blockchain marketplace," and at that stage, blockchain technology providers will undergo stricter security checks.

Before that, Gray said what they need to do is to create an educational and collaborative environment for blockchain products, allowing users to learn through trial and error.

Gray said Microsoft would be careful to act as a "gatekeeper" for the service, given that the technology is still in its early stages.

“We’re not trying to pick a ‘winner,’ and even if we wanted to, the market wouldn’t necessarily want the one we picked.”

Avoid competition

Gray stressed that what Microsoft is doing is different from the recent influx of tech giants, banks and professional services firms into the blockchain space, all of which seem determined to help institutions build their own blockchains based on their own interests.

For example, Internet payment company Earthport is developing a similar location-based service focused on connecting banks and payment providers to the Ripple protocol. Gray said Microsoft's goal is to facilitate communication between customers and protocol-level blockchain providers.

Gray explained:

“We will try not to compete with our customers and partners and instead try to do what we have always done.”

Gray said that what some companies such as Accenture, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and KPMG are doing is focusing more on their traditional areas - applying blockchain to their respective business affairs. At this point, Gray believes that Microsoft cannot and should not compete with them.

“The vertical expertise will come from our traditional vertical partners, you won’t see us developing a stock trading platform.”

Gray points to the success of Microsoft's products by providing partners with access to potential customers, giving them quick feedback and enabling them to respond more quickly to customer needs.

Gray sums up the strategy as "rapid trial and error at a low cost."

Take a neutral stance

How does Microsoft position itself relative to the behavior of major banks joining forces to experiment with blockchain? Gray said that Microsoft will seek a neutral position - providing a 'Swiss-style' development environment for developers.

In addition to sandbox development, consortiums are increasingly becoming a path for banks and financial institutions seeking to learn about the technology. The most notable is the R3CEV blockchain consortium, which has signed up 42 banks to date and is looking to expand.

But Gray argues that none of these networks are optimized to handle every need of participants.

Gray believes these consortium projects could leverage the Azure platform to eliminate the need for traditional types of trust agreements in permissioned blockchain networks.

While the bitcoin blockchain is often referred to as “trustless,” blockchain consortiums so far appear intent on replicating existing trust-based relationships in distributed ledger systems.

Gray gave a specific example of where a Microsoft service could act as an arbitrator: storage for encryption keys.

“A consortium could hold the keys to the kingdom on the Azure platform, rather than in a separate bank, and while they want to hand over management to the consortium, they may also want to own their own resources.”

Gray said cloud services can provide a more mature testing environment for the alliance. For example, R3 completed the first blockchain test between 11 major banks with the help of Azure.

Accelerate innovation

Regarding the current version of Azure’s BaaS service, Gray stressed that it is “completely open” to the public, and customers can deploy blockchains directly on Azure or indirectly through Azure in local data centers.

Cloud users can also deploy blockchains through a client that "fills in a web interface and clicks in." Gray said blockchains can be managed like any virtual machine in a cloud environment, and users can quickly add blockchain networks.

Such mechanisms are currently developed by application providers, not Microsoft. For example, if a developer wants to run Ethereum on a virtual machine, they need to deploy the blockchain through a template created by technology platform provider BlockApps.

“You have a private cloud and the nodes are in people’s hands. If they gain access to the blockchain, then they can join.”

In this way, Gray said, BaaS is a way for the company to replicate its own experimental process and its success.

“We initially launched our BaaS platform to include many blockchain platforms… to allow customers and partners and developers to experiment and figure out what they want. Gray concluded:

“Now, we can automate the setup and build a blockchain environment in 20 minutes. It’s very simple.”

Original article: http://www.coindesk.com/microsoft-blockchain-azure-marley-gray/
By Pete Rizzo
Translator: printemps
Editor: printemps
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/microsoft-blockchain)