Ethereum was heavily featured in a Microsoft demonstration in the Big Apple as companies working with the computer giant showed all their projects.
In total, three major companies – Bank of America, technology firm Mojix and digital travel company Webjet – demonstrated their Ethereum-based products to streamline various aspects of their industries and inaugurate new levels of transparency.
But it was not the proprietary (closed source) solutions that excited Marley Gray, Microsoft’s chief architect in the Azure Blockchain engineering change; Rather it was the potential that each of the industries could someday use the blockchain for good feedback and robust communication between applications.
“Once you reach that turning point, where the blockchain uses a smart contract, we can have the finances tied to the distribution chain and thus make the contracts interoperable to create benefits such as instant payments, fast deliveries, etc.”
-Marley Gray.
About 100 technologists, analysts, and buyers, as well as 30 reporters, attended the attractive and novel Microsoft event, designed to show how the company’s customers have partnered with the software vendor to improve their products. This may seem a little complicated for all those not familiar with cryptocurrencies and blockchain, that is why there is this arbitrage trading system that will guide you through.
Of course, it was not all about Blockchain; Other demos included a very interesting way of standardizing sports data, a video game, and a snake-like robot.
The Ethereum Show
Entering the room, Ann McCormack, director of trade and finance for the supply chain of Bank of America, presented an updated version of an application that uses smart contracts to handle a loan portfolio that was first revealed in September, in Switzerland.
This application is being built to help further digitize the still-outdated trade finance process, with Microsoft Treasury being one of the first companies to use such an application.
Representing the data and hardware analysis firm of the Mojix radio frequency identification, Dan Doles -CEO of the company, presented the advances made in the RFID scanner of his company, which is integrated to a private version of the Blockchain of Ethereum.
The Mojix crash application to connect to the Internet of Things devices is part of a larger effort that Microsoft calls Project Manifest, which by the way has already been contacted by 13 companies interested in participating.
Finally, John Guscic, executive director of Australian digital travel company Webjet Limited, demonstrated his Ethereum-based company project, designed to reduce the time it takes to reconcile hotel room availability around the world.
Webjet positioned the improvement of reservations in B2B hotels, as a way to reduce customer reservation errors.
Thinking big
It should come as no surprise that the demonstrations will focus on Ethereum-based applications, with Microsoft launching a Blockchain-based Azure (Blockchain-as-a-Service) service, which hit the market in 2015.
However, the event was widely accepted, beginning with an intense debate between senior Microsoft executives and panelists, in which Ibrahim Goksen, digital director of Maersk, a Danish shipping company, said.
Maersk spoke of very important applications in the event, especially a Blockchain tool that is being developed on the open-source platform of Hyperledger, not Ethereum.
While on stage, Goksen wanted to highlight an underlying principle linking Blockchain’s work to the screen and the data management issues experienced by each company in the room.
