Extract IBM’s Longshot Bet: Blockchain The most surprising third of IBM’s bet-the-farm strategy, however, has got to be its bet on Blockchain. First, a definition: “Blockchain is a shared, immutable ledger for recording the history of transactions,” according to the IBM web site. “It fosters a new generation of transactional applications that establish trust, accountability and transparency.” The original Blockchain forms the backbone of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, but IBM’s Blockchain effort has little or nothing to do with Bitcoin. Instead, IBM predicts that Blockchain will be an essential tool for “financial services, supply chain, and global logistics,” according to Rometty. “I believe Blockchain will do for trusted transactions what the Internet has done for information.”
Powerful words, considering IBM can count the number of Blockchain customers on one hand, and the industry at large is still unclear on how best to apply the novel technology.
Nevertheless, IBM is doubling down on Blockchain, contributing to and supporting the Hyperledger open source Blockchain project. “It’s the fastest growing open source project the Linux Foundation has ever had,” Rometty points out. The technology already runs on the IBM Cloud, as well as IBM’s z Systems mainframes. Blockchain on the mainframe, in fact, is where IBM is able to deliver the technology’s best performance. “We’re already talking about ten thousand transactions per second, or maybe more,” Rometty says.
While IBM is too circumspect to claim that Blockchain will actually drive mainframe sales, it is hoping that the technology will become mission-critical to its current mainframe customers, in particular in financial services.
