Google seems to be done with light experimentation and is finally ready to get serious when it comes to blockchain technology. The Mountain View-based tech giant has recently announced on its blog a new partnership with two exciting blockchain startups, namely Digital Asset and BlockApps.
The announcement comes just ahead of the Google Cloud Next ’18 conference scheduled to take place from 24 to 26 July 2018 in San Francisco. The main motivation for this partnership is Google’s need to bring DLT (Distributed Ledger Technologies) solutions to its GCP (Google Cloud Platform).
Google wasn’t the only one to issue press releases, as both Digital Asset and BlockApps were eager to express enthusiasm on their blogs.
Digital Asset expressing underlining excitement
Digital Asset’s press release announced, “a new collaboration with Google Cloud to bring Digital Asset’s blockchain platform and developer tools to Google Cloud Platform.” Digital Asset further emphasized the main benefits it would bring to the table by stating that GCP developers would now have “access to a comprehensive suite of tools and services to build, test and deploy distributed ledger applications on-demand and without having to configure the underlying platform.”
In the same press release, the CEO of Digital Asset Holdings, Blythe Masters, expressed his optimistic view on the partnership as follows: “We’re partnering with Google Cloud to provide developers with a full stack solution so they can unleash the potential for web-paced innovation in the blockchain. This will reduce the technical barriers to DLT application development by delivering our advanced distributed ledger platform and modeling language to Google Cloud.”
The upbeat thoughts of the CEO are also shared by the Head of Financial Services Platform at Google Cloud, Leonard Haw: “We are delighted to innovate with Digital Asset in the distributed ledger space. DLT has great potential to benefit customers not just in the financial services industry, but across many industries, and we’re excited to bring these developer tools to Google Cloud.”
Digital Asset’s announcement goes on to say that Google has also joined the company’s private beta developer program. In short, the developer program provides Google developers with access to the Software Development Kit (SDK) for the Digital Asset Modeling Language (DAML). “Solution Architects across Google now have access to the DAML SDK Developer Preview to explore blockchain applications with their clients.”
As noted in the press release: “In collaboration with Google Cloud, Digital Asset has expanded its developer program to include the DAML Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) on Google Cloud Platform. The DAML PaaS is a fully-managed solution that developers can use to test and deploy DLT applications, accessible through Google Cloud’s Orbitera application marketplace technologies. Combined with the DAML SDK, developers now have an end-to-end toolkit to build and deploy sophisticated distributed applications.”
BlockApps, ready to lend Google a helping hand to enter the blockchain space
As mentioned before, BlockApps also announced the partnership via its own press release. The press release focuses around the BlockApps STRATO that is a “rapid-deployment Blockchain-as-a-Service solution platform for enterprises.”
“BlockApps STRATO is the first Blockchain-as-a-Service platform, enabling the creation of blockchain solutions for all industry verticals. BlockApps launched the category of Blockchain-as-a-Service over two years ago and continues to set the standards for enterprise blockchains… Based on the Ethereum protocol, BlockApps STRATO provides enterprise-grade API integration capabilities, configurable consensus algorithms, and the capability to query and report on blockchain data using a traditional SQL database… Application developers will find STRATO familiar, easy to use, and easy to integrate with existing enterprise systems. This enables enterprise teams to quickly begin building blockchain applications.”
The CEO of BlockApps, Kieren James-Lubin, stated that “BlockApps is delighted to integrate our platform with GCP and support GCP customers, both existing and new, on their journey to build blockchain technology solutions.”
This is a very good move for Google, as it is currently lagging behind various competitors such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, both of which offer their own blockchain solutions called Blockchain Templates and Blockchain Workbench, respectively.