Amazon Web Services Now Includes a Blockchain-As-A-Service Option

Various technology companies have shown a keen interest in offering blockchain-as-a-service features. By doing so, these technology giants are allowing distributed ledgers to thrive, while also making it easier for developers to build new decentralized applications. Amazon Web Services is the latest company to offer BaaS, which is a rather surprising development.

A Curious Decision by Amazon

For quite some time now, people have been wondering if and when Amazon would get on board with either blockchain or cryptocurrency. While it seems highly unlikely the firm will ever support Bitcoin payments or related currencies, Amazon acknowledges the potential of blockchain technology. More specifically, Amazon Web Services – also known as AWS – now provides blockchain-as-a-service features to all of its customers.

This is a very peculiar development which very few people had expected to see at this time. That isn’t because blockchain tech has no potential – the opposite is true – but rather because Amazon seemingly had no plans to go down this path whatsoever. Even so, competition is a good thing, especially in the BaaS industry.

Amazon Web Services joins a growing list of companies offering blockchain-as-a-service features to their clients. Indeed, it seems other major companies have gone down this road in the past few years. At this time, firms including IBM, HP, Microsoft, and even SAP offer blockchain-as-a-service features, which further confirms that there is growing interest in this technology.  

Although it would seem as if Amazon Web Services is doing the exact same thing as all of these other providers, there is a big difference. More specifically, Amazon has made it clear that its adoption of BaaS is very different from all other offerings on the market today. The technology giant says it’s mainly interested in driving mass adoption of blockchain technology through use cases from which people can benefit sooner rather than later.

While that is a rather vague statement, it seems to confirm that Amazon is extremely committed to introducing more people to the blockchain industry. Amazon has partnered with Kaleido to offer cloud services on which companies and developers can host an Enterprise Ethereum-based blockchain platform. This also means Kaleido – which was developed by ConsenSys – is the first “managed” project of this type to be accessible through AWS.

With Amazon Web Services now on board with the blockchain-as-a-service industry, a very interesting situation has been created. While it remains to be seen how many companies and developers will embrace this solution, there seems to be genuine excitement regarding this development. Making blockchains easier to use will automatically lead to more use cases and increased adoption, which can only be considered a good thing.