IBM announces secure cloud blockchain service

Need secure audit and compliance? Step this way...

IBM is planning to offer blockchain technologies in the cloud running on the company's LinuxONE servers.

A blockchain is a type of mutual, distributed ledger in which all transactions written to it are visible to all, shared peer-to-peer across multiple machines, and impossible to alter or delete.

A key feature of blockchains is their security. This, together with the immutability of the records, makes them attractive in the financial sector, and for organisations that require a robust audit trail for transactions.

IBM said that the new blockchain cloud service will be based on what it claims is the industry's most secure Linux server, IBM LinuxONE, and will meet the general security and compliance needs of such organisations.

"Blockchain will change the way we transfer high value goods, digital assets and financial instruments. To accelerate blockchain adoption, clients must trust the infrastructure and the system that blockchain is running on," said Donna Dillenberger, IBM Fellow and global leader of enterprise systems at IBM Research.

"With IBM Blockchain, we are expanding access to the emerging technology not only by making it easy to get up and running on the IBM cloud, but by using the most secure infrastructure," she added.

The new service is currently in beta.

This is the latest in a series of related announcements by IBM as the company seeks to become a major player in the nascent market for blockchain technologies, and software and services based on blockchain.

The company released 44,000 lines of code in February to the Linux Foundation's Hyperledger Project, a collaborative open source endeavour that aims to promote a cross-industry open standard for the development of distributed ledgers such as blockchains.

IBM also announced a blockchain-as-a-service offering on the Bluemix cloud platform together with DevOps tools to allow developers to create, test and deploy blockchain applications in the cloud or on IBM z System servers. This service is also still in beta.

The company opened an incubator in Singapore in June to build prototype business solutions using blockchain and Watson AI tools.