As we enter the new year, it has become abundantly clear that blockchain will play a vital role in the digital transformation strategy for enterprises. A report on digital transformation has also laid out two notable predictions for 2021: “prominent in-industry value chains, enabled by blockchains, will have extended their digital platforms to their entire omni-experience ecosystems, thus reducing transaction costs by 35%” and “about 30% of manufacturers and retailers globally will have built digital trust through blockchain services that enable collaborative supply chains and allow consumers to access product histories.”

In support of enterprise digital transformation, IBM Blockchain Platform is now partnering with a suite of application modernization offerings, IBM Cloud Pak for Applications, to enable organizations to manage and monetize digital assets across decentralized cloud-native applications. These applications can use the robust capabilities of blockchain tools, infrastructure services, automation, containerization, and microservices architecture, providing visibility and consistency across infrastructures.

Deploy the IBM Blockchain Platform across multiple environments

Blockchain is a key player in digital transformation

IBM Blockchain Platform unlocks digital transformation use cases by providing a path to security-rich data sharing, dynamic applications and decentralized identity. It enables organizations to enhance application modernization, with capabilities to automate business processes, launch new digital products and monetize key digital assets.

With The Linux Foundation’s open source Hyperledger Fabric as its foundation, IBM Blockchain Platform enables organizations to build, operate, govern, and grow their blockchain network. It also facilitates cloud-native development for organizations that want to build their blockchain solution across public and private clouds by leveraging Red Hat OpenShift or another Kubernetes environment.

When combined with IBM Cloud Pak for Applications, these blockchain capabilities enable enterprises to rapidly develop decentralized applications. It is a solution that is purpose-built for the cost-effective transition of traditional apps to the cloud and deployment of new cloud-native applications.

The path to digital transformation is built with these six tenets for cloud native development and application modernization:

1. Containerization for applications to integrate and scale with enterprise needs

IBM Blockchain Platform and IBM Cloud Pak for Applications both use Red Hat OpenShift, a lightweight Kubernetes orchestration platform, where users can access Kubernetes-based, third-party tooling and deploy on premises or in multiple public clouds.

2. Common languages and frameworks essential for developing and maintaining cloud native applications

Provides a set of open runtimes, tools, and components for developing and maintaining cloud-native applications. It offers lightweight runtimes and frameworks for highly distributed cloud architectures, such as microservices.

3. Microservices architecture to help businesses adapt faster and more effectively

Speed can be increased in the development of applications that are built for Kubernetes while meeting the technology standards and policies determined by a blockchain consortium.

4. Agile DevOps processes vital to reducing time-to-market of applications

Developers can move from development to test to production, from a single console. The IBM Blockchain Platform Visual Studio (VS) Code extension is used to integrate smart contract development and network management. Additionally, the DevOps Add-on to Cloud Pak for Applications provides the capability for deployment automation and orchestration, release management, reporting, value stream visualization and pipeline management.

5. User-centric front ends essential in the next era of digital applications

IBM Mobile Foundation enables developers to rapidly build and deploy the next generation of blockchain applications, extending to mobile, wearables, conversation or web front ends. Developers get containerized mobile back-end services that cover robust security features, application lifecycle management, push notifications, feature toggle, offline sync and backend integration.

6. Application modernization a key workstream to align legacy systems with current business needs

With its traditional and Liberty runtimes, IBM WebSphere Application Server can be used to modernize applications for production-ready, standards-based Java EE-compliant architectures. Organizations that want to build new applications can use IBM Blockchain Platform and integrate with popular third-party services by using standard Kubernetes integrations.

The era of digital transformation

As a robust extension to IBM Cloud Pak for Applications, IBM Blockchain Platform will play a key role in ushering enterprises into the era of digital transformation.

Blockchain is a key part of the application modernization and cloud native development journey for enterprise clients, and helps bring their businesses into 2020. With these new tools, clients can now embark on a journey of end-to-end transformation.

Learn how industries are revolutionizing business with IBM Blockchain