What do you get when you offer easy access to an enterprise blockchain test environment for three months?
More than 2,000 developers and tens of thousands of transaction blocks, all sprinting toward production readiness.
Today, IBM announced that the program powering these new networks — IBM Blockchain Platform Starter Plan — is now generally available. Starter Plan can be accessed in 10 different languages — English, German, Spanish, French, mainland Chinese, Taiwan/Hong Kong Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese and Italian — for users across the globe.
As the leader in delivering production-ready blockchain solutions for the enterprise, IBM is observing a new generation of “born on blockchain” companies emerge. The IBM Blockchain Platform Starter Plan can help these companies quickly get started as they transform the way business is done across industries. Starter Plan can do this by helping developers, startups and enterprises build blockchain proof-of-concepts quickly and affordably with an end-to-end blockchain development experience: a secure test environment, suite of education tools and modules and one-click network provisioning. In addition, new users automatically receive a $500 credit to help start their first blockchain network when they sign up.
IBM Blockchain Platform: The complete blockchain for business experience
Powered by the open-source Hyperledger Fabric framework from The Linux Foundation, the IBM Blockchain Platform has been built specifically to help a group of institutions achieve their collective mission-critical business goals through increased transparency and reduced friction. And while Starter Plan was originally intended as an entry point for developers to test and deploy their first blockchain applications, users also now include larger enterprises creating full applications powered by dozens of smart contracts, eliminating many of the repetitive legacy processes that have traditionally slowed or prevented business success.
A few of the examples we’re seeing come to life include:
Mediaocean is automating digital media advertising buys using the IBM Blockchain Platform. As millions of advertising dollars have gone unaccounted-for in intermediary fees and non-working media, Mediaocean and IBM created a solution that will bring transparency to marketers, agencies and suppliers to track purchase orders, media orders, fee orders, delivery verifications, client invoices and supplier invoices. Mediaocean started by building a simulation network using Starter Plan and migrated to IBM Blockchain Platform Enterprise version for its pilot system.
Global Debt Registry helps institutional investors and warehouse lenders manage risk, improve efficiency and pricing in the credit markets by providing solutions that ensure the integrity of a loan asset. Using Starter Plan, Global Debt Registry applied Hyperledger Composer to quickly and easily write blockchain code in a native programming language. The aim is to create a transparent and immutable record to help protect loan providers by mitigating the risks of “double-pledged” assets.
RoadLaunch is using Starter Plan to build a blockchain solution for the logistics industry. Their certification platform is designed to provide users full transparency into supply chains from initial quote to proof of delivery. RoadLaunch expects blockchain’s transparency and verification capabilities to help participants save time and money through a solution that will scale to meet the ever-expanding needs of the logistics industry.
Identify 3D used Starter Plan to emulate an advanced digital manufacturing supply chain in which an engineer authorizes a manufacturer to produce a set of parts according to licensing restrictions. The team at Identify 3D relied on the extensive built-in security and IBM development tools featured in Starter Plan, allowing them to easily deploy and test blockchain applications.
Making it easy for anyone to develop, test and deploy blockchain solutions
Starter Plan was introduced as a way for anyone to access the benefits of the IBM Blockchain Platform regardless of their level of blockchain understanding or production readiness.
IBM has worked for several years to commercialize blockchain and harden the technology for the enterprise based on experience with hundreds of clients across industries. Beginning with IBM Research projects through to large, production networks spanning from banking and financial services to government to retail and more, IBM’s blockchain offerings have been tested and proven across a wide range of applications. The IBM Blockchain Platform was launched in August of 2017 based on experiences running these networks for organizations across industries. IBM’s blockchain offerings are designed to help companies quickly build, test and bring networks into production.
The IBM Blockchain Platform Starter Plan offers developers, academics, startups and established enterprises access to the same experience as users in the production-ready IBM Blockchain Platform Enterprise Plan, plus tools and capabilities built specifically for those earlier in the blockchain journey:
- One-click network configuration
- Code samples, accessible via GitHub
- Hyperledger Fabric 1.1 and Hyperledger Composer open source technology
- Ability to easily develop, govern and operate blockchain networks in minutes
- $500 in IBM Cloud *credits toward building on Starter Plan
Unleash the power of the IBM Blockchain Platform Starter Plan for your business today.
Get $500 in *credits with our Blockchain Platform Starter Plan
*Credit goes towards covering the first month’s fees for two peers and one membership fee.
Maya Shenoi's Tech Notes 