AWS Announces General Availability of Amazon Managed Blockchain

Amazon Managed Blockchain provides a fully managed service that makes
it easy and cost-effective to create, manage, and scale blockchain
networks

AT&T, Nestlé, and Singapore Exchange Limited among
companies using Amazon Managed Blockchain

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today, Amazon Web Services Inc., an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ: AMZN),
announced the general availability of Amazon Managed Blockchain, a fully
managed service that makes it easy to create and manage scalable
blockchain networks. Customers who want to allow multiple parties to
execute transactions and maintain a cryptographically verifiable record
of them without the need for a trusted, central authority can quickly
setup a blockchain network spanning multiple AWS accounts with a few
clicks in the AWS Management Console. Amazon Managed Blockchain scales
to support thousands of applications and millions of transactions using
popular open source frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum. To
learn more about Amazon Managed Blockchain, visit: https://aws.amazon.com/managed-blockchain.

For customers in businesses like finance, logistics, retail, and energy
that need to perform transactions quickly across multiple entities,
blockchain gives them the ability to execute contracts and share data,
with an immutable record of the transactions, but without the need for a
trusted, central authority. Customers typically create blockchain
networks using frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum, but
setting up the networks using these frameworks is difficult and time
consuming. Each member of a blockchain network has to provision
hardware, install software, create and manage certificates for access
control, and configure network settings. As usage of a blockchain
application grows, there is a lot of work involved in scaling the
network, including monitoring resources across all nodes, adding or
removing hardware, and managing the availability of the entire network.
This complexity is the reason many customers typically need the help of
expensive consultants to make blockchain work. Amazon Managed Blockchain
is a fully managed blockchain service that makes it easy and cost
effective for customers to create and manage secure blockchain networks
that can scale to support thousands of applications running millions of
transactions. Customers simply choose their preferred framework
(Hyperledger Fabric is supported at launch with Ethereum support coming
later this year), add network members, and configure the member nodes
that process transaction requests. Amazon Managed Blockchain takes care
of the rest, creating a blockchain network that can span multiple AWS
accounts and configuring the software, security, and network settings.

“Customers want to use blockchain frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric and
Ethereum to create blockchain networks so they can conduct business
quickly, with an immutable record of transactions, but without the need
for a centralized authority. However, they find these frameworks
difficult to install, configure, and manage,” said Rahul Pathak, General
Manager, Amazon Managed Blockchain at AWS. “Amazon Managed Blockchain
takes care of provisioning nodes, setting up the network, managing
certificates and security, and scaling the network. Customers can now
get a functioning blockchain network set up quickly and easily, so they
can focus on application development instead of keeping a blockchain
network up and running.”

In addition to making it easy to set up and manage blockchain networks,
Amazon Managed Blockchain provides simple APIs that allow customers to
vote on memberships in their networks and to scale up or down more
easily. Amazon Managed Blockchain offers a range of instances with
different combinations of compute and memory capacity to give customers
the ability to choose the right mix of resources for their blockchain
applications. Amazon Managed Blockchain secures certificates for access
control using AWS Key Management Service technology, eliminating the
need for customers to set up their own secure certificate storage.
Unlike existing blockchain technologies that require custom development
to extract blockchain network activity data, Amazon Managed Blockchain
makes it easy to replicate transactions to Amazon Quantum Ledger
Database (QLDB), which will offer a fully managed ledger database with a
central trusted authority when it becomes generally available in the
coming months. This gives customers the ability to gain advanced insight
into key trends, such as who is transacting and what is the rate of
their transactions. Amazon Managed Blockchain is available immediately
in US East (N. Virginia) and will expand to additional regions in the
coming year.

AT&T Business offers a range of edge-to-edge technologies including
mobility, cybersecurity, networking, voice and collaboration, cloud and
IoT solutions and services to match their customers’ technology needs.
“Blockchain is far more than just Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. It’s
changing the way companies do business and giving us a new way to solve
complex business problems,” said Andy Daudelin, Vice President,
Alliances Business Development, AT&T Business. “AT&T’s suite of
blockchain solutions now includes Amazon’s Managed Blockchain. Amazon
Web Services customers can integrate their blockchain solution with AT&T
Business’s IoT and edge-to-edge portfolio. This allows them to automate
data collection to improve their ability to manage complex supply chain
processes, monitor environmental conditions, improve security, gain
real-time insights, and so much more.”

Nestlé is a global food and beverage company with more than 2,000 brands
and global distribution across 189 countries worldwide. “Transparency in
supply chains is increasingly important to consumers, who want to know
what is in their food and where it comes from. While Nestlé has begun to
release information on its supply chains for its 15 key commodities,
using blockchain technology enables a more precise tracking,” said Armin
Nehzat, Digital Technology Manager, Nestlé Oceania. “With Amazon Managed
Blockchain, we are able to set up our Hyperledger Fabric network and
easily invite our partners to collaborate in our supply chain
transparency efforts. Amazon Managed Blockchain will enable our
customers to track their products on the blockchain from the farm all
the way through to consumption.”

Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX) is Asia’s leading and trusted market
infrastructure, operating equity, fixed income and derivatives markets
to the highest regulatory standards. “Ever since overcoming the physical
limitations of open-outcry trading pits, technology has been fundamental
to the transformation of critical financial-market infrastructures,”
said Andrew Koay, Head of Blockchain Technology, SGX. “SGX sees
blockchain technology as a way to bring innovation to our distributed
financial marketplace, and we have developed Delivery-versus-Payment
(DvP) capabilities for the settlement of tokenized assets across
different blockchain platforms. We are working with AWS to move our
existing investments in Hyperledger Fabric to Amazon Managed Blockchain.
Amazon Managed Blockchain offers businesses the opportunity to eliminate
the heavy-lifting typically required in infrastructure setup. This
allows us to focus on adding business value and not worry about managing
or scaling the underlying platform.”

MOBI, the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative, is a non-profit
foundation formed to accelerate adoption of and to promote standards in
blockchain, distributed ledgers, and related technologies. “Blockchains
will increasingly impact the provisioning of mobility services since
they enable business networks to reduce the cost of coordinating their
activities,” said Chris Ballinger, Founder and CEO, MOBI. “MOBI hopes to
build a worldwide network of cities, infrastructure providers,
consumers, and producers of mobility services in order to realize the
many potential benefits of blockchain technology. Since Amazon Managed
Blockchain is a fully managed service, users are able to setup a
Hyperledger Fabric network in minutes and easily invite other partners
to join. Also, since Amazon Managed Blockchain’s ordering service
ensures reliable sharing of data across the network, our participants
don’t need to worry about managing infrastructure and building a
blockchain solution from the ground up. Instead, they can now focus on
building applications for connected car payments, autonomous and
electric vehicles, and peer to peer ride-sharing services.”

TrackX Inc. is an enterprise asset management company deploying
SaaS-based solutions for the comprehensive tracking and management of
physical assets. “Returnable asset tracking including movement and
transportation tracing, invoicing, billing, payment and remediation is
complicated, and time sensitive,” said Dr. Eddie Shek, Chief Strategy
Officer, TrackX. “Blockchain technology has the potential to increase
the speed at which we track and reconcile returnable and reusable assets
such as beer kegs, intermediate bulk containers, and plastic pallets.
Before Amazon Managed Blockchain, we had spent a huge effort building
and managing our blockchain infrastructure. Now, we can use Amazon
Managed Blockchain to quickly and easily create blockchain networks with
Hyperledger Fabric and easily enable our customers to monitor and
maintain accountability throughout their entire supply chain. Amazon
Managed Blockchain fully manages our blockchain infrastructure and
shared network components, enabling us to focus on developing smart
contracts to deliver additional value to our customers.”

Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a
broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital,
technology, and operations. “At Accenture, blockchain is driving
business transformation in virtually every industry—from aerospace to
not-for-profits,” said Prasad Sankaran, Senior Managing Director of
Accenture’s Intelligent Cloud & Infrastructure business group.
“Blockchain’s unique characteristics are helping to reinvent complex
supply chains, improve business processes, and expand the reach and
veracity of our digital identities. As the technology continues to take
hold, services such as Amazon Managed Blockchain can drive both cost
saving and revenue generating opportunities.”

About Amazon Web Services

For 13 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most
comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 165
fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking,
analytics, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence
(AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and
augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development,
deployment, and management from 64 Availability Zones (AZs) within 21
geographic regions, spanning the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, China,
France, Germany, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, India,
Ireland, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Sweden, and the UK. Millions of
customers including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises,
and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure,
become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.

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