IBM Reveals Concept for Blockchain-Powered Internet of Things

What is blockchain?

Blockchain is a technology for a new generation of transactional applications that establishes trust, accountability and transparency while streamlining business processes. A blockchain has two main concepts. A business network, where members exchange items of value through a ledger, which each member possesses and whose content is always in sync with the others.

Blockchain a New Disruption in Financial Servies

Introduction

Blockchain is a technology for a new generation of transactional applications that establishes trust, accountability and transparency while streamlining business processes. It is a design pattern made famous by bitcoin, but its uses go far beyond. With it, we can re-imagine the world's most fundamental business interactions and open the door to invent new styles of digital interactions. It has the potential to vastly reduce the cost and complexity of cross-enterprise business processes. The distributed ledger makes it easier to create cost-efficient business networks where virtually anything of value can be tracked and traded—without requiring a central point of control.
The application of this emerging technology is showing great promise across a broad range of business applications.

Blockchain

For example, blockchain allows securities to be settled in minutes instead of days. It can also be used to help companies manage the flow of goods and related payments, or enable manufacturers to share production logs with OEMs and regulators to reduce product recalls.

“ Over the past two decades, the Internet has revolutionized many aspects of business and society–making individuals and organizations more productive. Yet the basic mechanics of how people and organizations execute transactions with one another have not been updated for the 21st century. Blockchain could bring to those processes the openness and efficiency we have come to expect in the Internet Era. ”
—Arvind Krishna, Senior VP, IBM Research

IBM joins Linux Foundation to advance Blockchain

Blockchain has huge potential to transform a wide range of industries. But work needs to be done to arrive at a blockchain fabric that is standards-based and ready for the enterprise. IBM joins the Linux Foundation to help accelerate this exciting technology in a new open source community.

Technical Introduction to IBM's Open Blockchain (OBC)



Watch this animation for a sneak peek at the possibilities and how a blockchain-enabled internet can make a radical difference in your industry. Read this post to see how IBM is contributing to this pursuit: ibm.biz/ThinkBlockchain

Bitcoin explained

The Problem and the solution

Before

Asset ownership and transfer between businesses is currently inefficient, slow, costly and vulnerable to manipulation. Everyone has their own ledger where discrepancies between business parties can increase settlement times.
A new way is needed for Internet-age market enablement.

After

Blockchain technologies can be used to share a ledger across the business network. The network will be private to the parties concerned, permissioned so only authorized parties are allowed to join, and secure using cryptographic technology to ensure that participants only see what they are allowed to see.
The shared ledger will be more robust, since it is replicated and distributed. All transactions against the ledger will require consensus across the network, where provenance of information is clear and transparent. Transactions will be immutable (unchangeable) and final.
The business network participants will be the same - disintermediation is not a natural consequence of blockchain usage.
Goods and services are provided more efficiently, with the potential to lower costs on all levels.

Key concepts of blockchain

A blockchain has two main concepts. A business network, in which members exchange items of value through a ledger, which each member possesses and whose content is always in sync with the others.

Understanding Blockchains


A business network

• A decentralized peer-to-peer architecture with nodes consisting of market participants (such as banks and securities firms).
• Protocol peers validate and commit transactions in order to reach consensus.

Shared ledger

It can act as a source of truth for businesses doing transactions on a blockchain:

• Records all transactions across the business network
• Is shared among participants
• Is replicated so each participant has their own copy
• Is permissioned, so participants see only appropriate transactions

Often, companies have multiple ledgers for multiple business networks in which they participate. It can be used for recording and totaling financial transactions.

The benefits of blockchain

Blockchain can help radically improve industries, beginning with banking and insurance. However the opportunities for blockchain go far beyond this. We predict that this technology will be used to create smart(er), more efficient systems for supply chains, Internet of Things networks, gaming, multi-media rights management, car rental, Government proof of identity (or license) creation and insurance record management.

• More efficient
• Less risky
• More cost-effective
• Legal contracts
• Corporate treasury, accounts payable and receivable
• Trade finance, letters of credit
• Smart Property
• International payments
• Internal cash management

Next Generation IoT Technologies Using The Block Chain

This session will include findings from the recent research study conducted by IBM’s Institute for Business Value on a decentralized Internet of Things. We present a revolutionary approach to address the problems of cost, privacy and longevity of smart devices on the Internet Things. We make the case for rethinking the technology strategy at the foundation of the IoT to be secure, scalable and efficient. Our approach leverages the “block chain” – the technology platform underlying Bitcoin - to create a decentralized platform for the Internet of Things.

An overview of how Samsung and IBM are thinking about the next generation of IoT infrastructure, why we're using the Block Chain (derived from Bitcoin) and what to expect at our January proof of concept presentation in CES will be presented.

IBM Bluemix Garage for Blockchain

Making blockchain real for business

To help accelerate the design and development of blockchain applications, connect with us or try out the IBM Bluemix garages for blockchain. IBM Bluemix garage for blockchain combines industry expertise with blockchain technology along with proven methods Design Thinking and Agile Development, to deliver business solutions that work. We know it’s important to be close to our customers and we have IBM Bluemix for blockchain garage locations in New York, London, Singapore and Tokyo. Additionally, we have Bluemix garage offices in San Francisco, Toronto, Nice, Melbourne, and wherever you are.

Featured sample applications

Simple Data Pipe

Data movement in the cloud made easy
The Simple Data Pipe allows you to connect to data behind web APIs and land it all in one staging ground in its native form using IBM Cloudant NoSQL DB. Bluemix provides prebuilt connections to data sources as well as integrations with both IBM dashDB for data warehousing and IBM Analytics for Apache Spark™ for advanced analytics processing.

Twitter Sentiment Analysis

Decode social conversations using Spark and Watson
Tweets can tell you a lot about how your customers feel. With Twitter Sentiment Analysis, you can easily deploy Spark Streaming along with IBM Watson to analyze emotional, social, and language tones across the Twittersphere. This open source app uses Spark Streaming to capture tweets in real time, score them with the Watson Tone Analyzer service on Bluemix, and visualize the results with an iPython Notebook. It's simple social sentiment scoring, for free!

Getting started with Blockchain 

With the IBM® Blockchain service on Bluemix, you can quickly spin up a blockchain network and circumvent the complexities involved with manually creating a development environment. Rather than creating and managing a network, developers can spend their time generating applications and working with chaincode. The service is a peer-to-peer permissioned network built on top of the Linux Foundation's Hyperledger fabric code.

You can use a blockchain network to exchange financial records through a shared ledger. For more information about shared ledgers and business networks, see the About Blockchain topic.

You can get to the Console through this Link:
https://console.ng.bluemix.net/docs/services/blockchain/index.html

To get started, follow these steps to create and deploy an unbound service instance of a Blockchain network. Once complete, you will have your own development environment with validating nodes and a security service. From there, you can deploy chaincode, see results, and build your applications:

From the landing page for the Blockchain DevOps Service, complete the following fields in the Add Service window:

1. Choose dev from the Space drop-down window.
2. Leave the App field as Leave unbound.
3. Change the Service name to myblockchain123, or some value unique to you.
4. Leave the Credential name field as its default value.
5. Leave the Selected Plan as its default value.
6. Click CREATE.

You are now on the Service Dashboard screen for your new service. From here you can Manage your instance of the network:

1. Click LAUNCH to see the blockchain monitor for your Blockchain network.

The blockchain monitor displays network details, live logs, current ledger state, APIs, and chaincode templates. Use the dashboard for any of the following functions:

1. Access Discovery and API routes for the peers on your network.
2. View any currently-running chaincode containers.
3. View real-time logs and troubleshoot chaincode that fails to execute.
4. View the world state for your ledger.
5. Access the Swagger UI and interact with your network via the REST API.
6. Deploy one of three available chaincode examples.

Jerry Cuomo says Blockchain is OPEN for business

Jerry Cuomo (IBM Fellow, VP, and CTO of Middleware) opens his remarks by saying, "We believe will fundamentally change the way we do business." He says that IBM's efforts in blockchain are "open by design."

Jerry Cuomo starts with some "blockchain 101." He discusses some common use cases that may be radically changed by blockchain technology:

Common blockchain use casesJerry Cuomo says the common element in these use cases is that they take several days to "settle" and that, "Blockchain can reimagine the world's most fundamental business interactions and open the door to invent new styles of digital interactions." Jerry says the game changing element of blockchain is it's ability to reduce the time it takes to settle multiparty transactions. Blockchain can also reduce the cost of these transactions and reduce risk of tampering with the transactions.

Jerry Cuomo explains the concept of a "ledger" in blockchain technology:

Jerry Cuomo introduces the "Hyperledger project," which is being launched through the Linux Foundation. It's goal is to make blockchain ready for business. They are looking at enhancements that will be needed for business applications such as a permission model, audit mechanisms. Jerry says that IBM has offered 45,000 lines of code to the Hyperledger project to help make blockchain technology ready for business.

More Information:

http://www.ibm.com/blockchain/

https://console.ng.bluemix.net/docs/services/blockchain/index.html

https://developer.ibm.com/tv/videos/jerry-cuomo-says-blockchain-is-open-for-business/

http://www.ibm.com/blogs/think/2015/12/17/how-blockchain-will-transform-business-and-society/

http://www.ibm.com/blogs/think/2016/02/16/reinventing-securities-trading-with-blockchain/

http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2015/09/blockchain-really-big-deal.html

http://www.ibm.com/blockchain/what_is_blockchain.html

http://www.ibm.com/blockchain/what_can_blockchain_do_for_you.html

http://www.ibm.com/blockchain/garage.html

https://console.ng.bluemix.net/catalog/services/blockchain/

http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/bluemix/solutions/?cm_mc_uid=99256165702814633027682&cm_mc_sid_50200000=1463302768

http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/bluemix/data-analytics/

http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/bluemix/containers/

https://github.com/IBM-Blockchain

http://www.the-blockchain.com