Emerging Technology: What is Blockchain? Will this technology produce the next Hyperscale customers?
By: Brandon Fried
techrealestatetrends.com
Blockchain: The buzzword has strong ties to the financial industry but has endless applications to essentially all industries. A term that Goldman Sachs says the technology “has the potential to redefine transactions” and can change “everything.”
But what is Blockchain?
The blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that underlies cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. It provides a way to record and transfer data that is transparent, safe, auditable, and resistant to outages. The blockchain has the ability to make the organizations that use it transparent, democratic, decentralized, efficient, and secure. It’s a technology that holds a lot of promise for the future, and it is already disrupting many industries.
Every industry vertical has the opportunity to effectively store transaction, customer and supplier data in a more transparent, permanent ledger online. Some major industries, other than the financial industry, such as Healthcare, Energy and Education will all be impacted by Blockchain:
Healthcare – Electronic medical records stored in a blockchain, accessed ad updated via biometrics, allow for the democratization of patient data and alleviate the burden of transferring records among providers.
Energy – Decentralized energy transfer and distribution are possible via micro transactions of data sent to blockchain, validated and re-dispersed to the grid while securing payment to the submitter.
Education – Educational institutions could utilize blockchain to store credentialing data around assessments, degrees and transcripts, as well as verification of knowledge transfer between parties.
Blockchain Diagram – Bitcoin use case
And what implications does it have on the Data Center/Cloud Industry?
While it remains unclear how and when large scale adoption of Blockchain Technology will take place, past Bitcoin, we do know there are numerous industries that will benefit from this disruptive technology. In turn, as new technology is adopted, there is a large increase in data being stored and consumed. We also have seen an explosion of new Blockchain providers hit the market (Blockchain as a Service), these providers will also become massive consumers of data.