So, what else does an enterprise need to consider to make blockchain a consumable technology? Here are some considerations:
1. Enterprise integration:
a. Integration with the incumbent system of record (SoR): The solution must support existing and incumbent systems, such as customer-relationship management (CRM), business inteligence, and reporting and analytics. This integration is also important because the investments that are made in these systems are significant and embedded into various operational elements of a business.
b. The blockchain as a transaction processing system: The SoR may be preserved as an interim approach to adopt blockchain, but an enterprise cannot have two systems as a transaction processing system — that is, a transaction cannot be processed twice.
c. Design intent to include: The path of least disruption accelerates the enterprise adoption. This is a vital consideration due to costs ans the disruption of operations.
2. Auditing and logging:
Auditing and logging address enterprise technology preferred practices, such as change management, support, and high-availability disaster recovery (HADR) requirements, as well as enterprise business practices and reporting requirements. You must satisfy regulations regarding regulated systems for purposes of nonrepudiation, technology root— cause analysis, fraud analysis, and other enterprise systems.
3. Monitoring:
Monitoring the system is vital because blockchain us a network, and any systemic impact — whether a technical or business exception—will affect the network and ecosystem participants. Also, you must satisfy regulations and generally accepted IT practices for purposes of high availability, capacity planning, pattern recognition, and fault identification.
4. Reporting and regulatory requirements:
This is the most important consideration, even for the interim adoption of blockchain as a transaction processing system. To meed these requirements, you should create connectors to an existing SoR to offload the reporting and regulatory requirements until the blockchain is enterprise-aware —or rather, the enterprise software is blockchain-aware.
5. Autentication, authorization, and accounting requirements:
Unlike in the permissionless world of the Bitcoin blockchain, in a permissioned enterprise world all participants must be identified and tracked, and their roles defined within the blockchain ecosystem. The topics that are part of this domain include the digital identities of the various individuals and business entities that participate in a blockchain network. Concepts such as a distributed or descentralized trust, digital identity; self-sovereign identity; consent management, and distributed access control (DACL) are evolving to address the various authentication and authorization needs of a blockchain network.
