Is AWS gearing up for Blockchain as a Service?

Dive Brief:

In another stride for blockchain adoption at the enterprise level, Amazon Web Services customers can run open source Ethereum and Hyperledger frameworks on Amazon ECS clusters or EC2 instances, according to an announcement last week.
Customers only have to pay for the cloud resources needed to run a blockchain network — not for the blockchain templates.
The templates make available public or private Ethereum networks and private Hyperledger networks, according to Jeff Barr, chief evangelist for AWS. Customers can use these networks for financial purposes, such as monetary systems and payment transactions, or as a distributed ledger and data management platform for supply chain, crowdfunding and logistics applications, among others.

Dive Insight:

Cloud competitors like Oracle, Microsoft and Google have also been creating a place on their platforms for blockchain technologies. Oracle, for example, launched an enterprise blockchain cloud service last year, and Microsoft offers more than 20 blockchain solutions in the Azure Marketplace.

Google is still working on blockchain solutions for the Google Cloud Platform, but it may only be a matter of time before the the company emerges as a leader in the space. Google led corporate investment in the ledger technology last year and continues investing in and acquiring promising blockchain startups.

But the availability of these templates and tools comes at a time when many customers aren't ready to apply blockchain efficiently.

Identifying a problem where blockchain is the best solution can be beneficial, but many businesses are deciding to use blockchain and then finding a problem to fit the technology to. In the latter case, existing computing systems and resources are often capable of solving the problem without forcing reallocation of labor and resources to an unknown, difficult to implement blockchain system.

More access to blockchain through cloud platforms will make it easier for companies to experiment and grow familiarity with the technology. Having a workforce with the relevant skills in place will make it easier to develop the relevant use case when that time comes.