Hewlett Packard Enterprise is pioneering the concept of “blockchain as a service,” offering the technology with advantages Bitcoin lacks.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise already helps big companies with cloud computing, data centers and the Internet of Things. Now, for the first time, it will also help businesses use blockchain.
The new offering, which HPE (hpe, -0.18%) launches Friday, is billed as “blockchain as a service,” and it’s unique in that it offers major enterprise customers, such as banks, the ability to use the technology on a larger scale than is currently possible with popular blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum. For example, Bitcoin transactions can take at least 10 minutes to process, as so-called miners generate a new “block” and record the transfer. And Ethereum has limited capacity to handle transactions, which means it can buckle under high demand.
That’s where HPE aims to come in. The company said it would begin selling its Mission Critical distributed ledger technology, or DLT, publicly starting next year, providing the hardware for enterprises that want to run their own blockchain operations or working with clients to implement blockchain in the cloud.
“We believe blockchain will be as fundamental to technology as the Internet,” says Raphael Davison, HPE’s worldwide director for blockchain.
While Bitcoin was “blockchain 1.0,” and has captured the interest of many businesses and even central banks looking for a more efficient way to move money, “they do not feel safe using it,” Davison says, given the issues around reliability and security. “One client said they needed a 1,000-times increase in the transaction output before they could implement it,” he adds. “So the enterprise people are saying and even the Ethereum people are saying this doesn’t scale.”
Source/More: ‘Blockchain 2.0’ By HPE Launches For Cars, Banks and Planes | Fortune
