BBW24 – Day 1 – Enterprise Blockchain in the Cloud: Revolutionizing Business Ecosystems

all right thank you everybody for coming uh good show out this year I think this is my third year so it's uh always good to see the crowds growing in the content uh continuing on we are going to be talking about uh uh Enterprise and blockchain hybridization and how it's transforming the architecture of Enterprise by using blockchain uh I'm joined by uh Saji ner from uh bcbe analytics I'm going to actually have these gentlemen they're growing medic can introduce themselves Sai you want to introduce yourself yeah I'm Sai I'm the co-founder and uh CEO of BQ analytics and uh we primarily specialize in audit and uh policy management workflows that's a with our primary product being re stacker and what it does it enables collaboration between Auditors and clients so with suitable uh Integrations we offer manage services around cyber security uh fraud detection and one of the latest things we do is uh Cloud cost optimization so if you're building or using Cloud we could save you at least about 15 to 20% last year working with cubic labs and with uh Brandon we actually added a kyc management uh solution using blockchain and that was our uh you know to bring in trust and uh uh security and uh efficiency to record keeping so Brian all right hello everyone my name is Brian Bennett I'm uh currently an Enterprise Cloud architect here at uh Oracle I specialize in whatever is the new buzzword in technology right now it's you know generative AIA HPC performance intensive compute GPU accelerated compute anything you see in the news I probably specialize in been at Oracle for about um 9 years um I'm part of the um infrastructure and platform as a service team it's probably easier to list off what Oracle doesn't do as opposed to what it does but you know nine times out of 10 if you need to do it in Enterprise we most likely do it looking forward to today's conversation all right so with Enterprise uh architecture and with blockchain um coming together and you're seeing this in multiple different verticals you're seeing this in Insurance you're seeing this in uh supply side uh you're seeing it in I'm sorry supply chain you're seeing it in marketing uh how have you seen Enterprise rise architecture Enterprise um systems and blockchain working together and how have you seen that work effectively in your line of work I mean I I I see it all over where you know there are a lot of cool things that people want to do with with blockchain but you know what's more important is talking about the things that actually go from Pilot to production and that's generally tracking things like um blockchain so big in Supply Chain management we've actually built it into um one of the fusion apps uh you know SCM Supply Chain management um but then again making sure that enterprises could Implement a blockchain without requiring specialized knowledge allowed you to see blockchain implementations like in healthcare where people want to do like um real time monitoring of um specific uh Health factors right you think of a use case where um patients who have some sort of heart surgery uh you know there's a high percentage that they need to be readmitted right do due to failing weight blood pressure something along those lines and they go back and forth between different Health teams or different hospitals different doctors so making sure that there's a sense of Truth or source of truth that they could replicate or or spew in real time in regards to uh Health markers is is really important and you see blockchain being implemented Beyond you know just tracking product in uh Healthcare right and you know making sure that's easy to do is where you get to see blockchain in verticals you don't expect to yeah and are you seeing anything in like prototyping or assistive uh uh type of add-ons augmentation to the Enterprise architecture or even something that's real world use case that's added either uh something in terms of a scalability solution or a cost uh you know cost burndown type uh solution have you seen anything in that regard um scale out Oracle wanted to make sure that when it came to any type type of Technology customers could choose to be in the cloud or choose to be on premise or choose to have a hybrid uh capability right we wanted to make sure that when we put a technology out there we're not building a Walled Garden forcing you specifically into an oracle stack so when it came to our blockchain technology we based it off um the open source hyper Leger fabric so that way if you wanted to use Oracle technology in the cloud or on Prim you could if you wanted to bring like a compatible non Oracle um hyper ler fabric to or or no to Oracle Cloud you could do that as well and they would um interoperate with with one another so scalability is something that we we wanted to make sure customers had uh deployment choice on got it okay Saji um what are some of the uh biggest advantages that cloud-based architecture and uh blockchain bring to Enterprises so basically three major aspects one is that we found one is uh scalability so before we say that like blockchain and Cloud they are actually like perfect synergetic uh infrastructures so uh if you look at uh uh from our perspective like when we implemented audit it was on the cloud and we could you know run hundreds of audits simultaneously have complex workflows multiple users can connect with each other so to add add kyc to this auditing process was like you know uh uh kyc is more very sensitive so it has to we have blockchain brings in trust it brings in like uh security and it brings like also the efficiency when integrated with it like you have a uh uh a truth record like you know like Master record which can be relied upon so uh basically the efficiencies that are brought by the cloud uh uh process which if you simply go with blockchain performance may not be that very good you may not be able to use it in large scale systems but when you add it on the cloud it like really becomes very efficient interesting and how have you seen uh you know over the over the years you've seen architecture change from like a client server model to a distributed model and now we're in you know we're moving towards decentralization like true decentralization and is that is there a desire for that in Enterprise especially large scale like larger business type operations in those verticals to say we we need to go to to decentralized model and why um the the reason is uh because if you simply look at blockchain per se there are quite a few uh challenges right number one is like um uh there was a report by uh Deo which said 45% of customers site that inte integrating blockchain to Legacy systems is very difficult then uh you so so you need a suitable way to connect and the second thing is that uh they talk about again scalability like if you have very large volume transactions uh in various Industries if Standalone blockchain will be difficult uh there was a meckenzie report which cited like 42% mentioned this as a big problem the third big problem is like uh the talent and cost so not only do you need to have uh significant investment in the software side but also you need to invest in Talent to retain and have a successful adoption so that's like 25% according to PWC cited that as a and lastly uh the data privacy and the sovereignty rules so how do you comply with say gdpr how do you comply with hipop when you are working in a global scale so your software should be able to adapt to all these so these are primary challenges so bringing the cloud helps you to resolve a lot like scalability quickly is uh uh is uh taken care of like in our audit that uh we have very efficient and uh uh quick this and for the kyc the blockchain implementation brings you uh data uh like the what do you call a reliable Master record yeah right and uh also it uh it is very efficient to uh do like the verification of uh uh customer identification and also you know with the cloud processes those become much more faster and uh finally it's like uh security security is a uh blockchain brings in an immutable layer of uh security to the record so these are primarily the kind of factors that go into building it and uh yeah interesting interesting so I'm not seeing a lot of um instance type setups in the architecture for gcp forour for AWS I don't know about Oracle are there anything that's out there that they're building that is specific towards like either node hosting or any type of any type of inck uh cross chain inter Rock uh that Oracle is is uh providing or how do you solve that if if not me personally I haven't seen anything for for cross chain interoperability it's just allowing people to utilize what they were accustomed to and then expand it with you know the Oracle Cloud platform with you know uh ancillary Services right so making Mak sure that um our blockchain could potentially work with whatever blockchain you have implemented and then depending on how things are interacting with that service you could add you know an additional layer of um replication or analytics right or for for troubleshooting or or all sorts of of things you know maybe even like a cloud storage layer just for for storing are those more private chain or is that is that uh more is it is it a private chain type solution it's it's more it's more private chain because that's typically what what Oracle as a whole sees and then if we if we just key it down to my experience right that's what Enterprises are are asking for got it uh I want to add to what he mentioned like uh customers adopt different different types of cloud infrastructures and various kinds of blockchain Frameworks so when we worked you saw that we could really build a complete end to end application production ready in about 10 weeks that was because we used a specialized middleware uh called B rad which allows you to not only build your Enterprise applications or connect to ex existing applications or it could connect to Oracle Cloud it could connect to other uh you know um blockchain uh um things like we used Corum initially and we are also planning for Oracle chain link at some point of time so it's like very efficient to add both sides using the middleware so you really have a working application this is where the significant challenge lies how do you you know address like the interoperability standards are evolving yeah and as the protocols evolve you need to have a middleware that will help hold you stable and like you're able to maintain continuity what would you say it would be a barrier then to someone who is wanting to incorporate that and they are let's let's just assume um a cloud agnosticism like I'm not really in particularly in bed with one or another uh cloud provider what would be the barriers that you see in terms of implementation so the largest barrier I would say is interoperability with Legacy systems with I'm sorry with Legacy system Legacy system so almost uh like majority of the Enterprises they do not have a application that is ready to connect to a blockchain right so how do you solve that problem how do you address that problem so those are some things which we demonstrated using the uh middleware that we have and also like uh it should be scalable it should be uh you know able to connect to different vendors adjust different protocols and also be interoperable with the web got it got it Brian what um what would you say are some of the most exciting projects you're seeing or you're involved in um that are that have this kind of fusion uh out out you know this uh this vision of having a fusion of of cloud-based operations using blockchain within them um there was the one I mentioned earlier with with Healthcare then there was one um in regards to banking for like um crossborder uh payments that was that was interesting because um I got to work with you know teams in America versus teams I think in like Jordan right so making sure that um it's kind of interesting because when people think of blocking blockchain they think about oh different corporate entities or different enti um dealing with one another but when you look at large Enterprises there'll be like a parent company with different subsidiaries and then it's fundamentally the same thing that that you're solving right you need to make sure that um you know one one corporate entity's bank you know sending funds or or transaction to something cross border you know gets verified usually they um have to pay like third parties to kind of audit this and then if there's a mistake in the auto Trail or doing any type of um uh investig can take lots of of money so being able to help you know just large or and Oracle is a large organization as well you know I work in one team of 50,000 maybe right so actually helping them just fine-tune internal policies has has been interesting um for me and then there was this one Corporation who uh what what can I say that was being paid by someone who owns a lot of Ip that may or may not be superheroes right they were they were trying to do um some some nft work specifically with new um designs that had not yet been put into comic book so that way people could purchase the um the initial designs of costumes right and that that was that was an interesting um that was an interesting use case within itself I like oh wow yeah sh sell the concept art in a way where people can say I I own the original version of you know said said costume that was that was that was actually very interesting awesome so about you so uh my partner company we had seen quite a few use cases on supply chain but uh uh we are primarily focused mainly on the financial services and uh uh compliance and Regulatory uh compliance area so our main uh interest was in the kyc specifically for non-financial services uh uh segment or regulated Industries which are not in the financial services where they have a significant cost barrier to adopt this kind of a uh you know kyc solution so blockchain means like once a customer is uh uh you know added like you could have different different entities use the same uh you know trail of records and you know go on adding updates so you don't have to spend a lot every single entity does not have to do the same uh uh uh use the same amount of uh you know resources and uh time and uh cost to get the customer verification done rather use it as a Community effect and the blockchain is the only way that can help you to get to you know where multi-party workflow is uh from multiple organizations are involved so that kind of a scenario is what we are really looking to do that yeah and I see I see a lot of uh hybridization of things like message bus uh you know message Q uh tying into either oracles or trans or projectors and how those are being pushed back to either end users or you know some recipient um system I'm curious what protocols are you seeing being leveraged from the web two world into above and beyond dlts whether it's a projector an oracle something of that nature what are you seeing above and beyond that like would be a trend to be honest that's that's just not something that uh that I've come across sure um so I I I would defer to to use yeah so again same here like uh those are a little beyond my scope of uh discussion but uh What uh I can tell you is that uh we use a middleware called B rad which specializes in connecting to different uh blockchain uh uh uh systems having different different types of protocols and how the protocols evolve the middleware takes care of it so it's just like you know you're working with the database the database interaction is uh encapsulated so we follow the same uh uh concept yeah over here using the platform so that simplifies or eliminates the kind of risks or the overheads that you as a product company or a blockchain who wants to uh enter into blockchain space will have to you know uh go through when you set when you set down that path what did you establish as being essential what were critical path items that you know from a protocol standpoint from a um you know what what you know if we're choosing a particular layer one to use or even a private chain what were some of the essential ingredients that you would you would call out as you know to make that successful um uh just in that use case that use case you described yeah from from the simple use case like uh any uh like we focus more from the end user perspective like uh what the what like in the kyc space right uh if you look at collectively in the industry every financial institution or even like in non Financial segments like uh hospitals or jewelry where you need to know simply the identification of the customer cost is extremely high for each one to maintain to comply and uh and and lot of dollars are spent everywhere so our focus is like can we centralize it can we reduce it so End customer is able to you know yep I think I think a good use case that's going to come out is going to be you know the replacement of ooth with self self- Sovereign identity so as dids come out you'll be able to it's really about the ownership of your own information your own data to where instead of having to authenticate through Apple or Google or Facebook where your data is not owned you are borrowing your data to authenticate against another Third Party Source you have revocable and um you know sovereignty over your own information today that is a like we are thinking of it as a uh wish list but gdpr will mandate that he should do it yes right excellent all right well we've got about a few minutes left on here I want to open up for any questions that there may be for the for the panelists um happy to take those now any questions at all I uh earlier you mentioned like which um Cloud products are associated maybe with which uh whichever um other blockchains and they I work a lot with Microsoft Azure and I see that they have an ethereum VM ready to go and over on AWS they have uh an avalanche or an aax one click set up ready to go is is that the type of uh product you're so yeah what I what I meant was what you're talking about is like Deployable self-contained applications or self-contained Services um what I meant was something that is specifically built around that so um an evm um that is not running on an ec2 or any type of other you know U whatever the building block is that's what I meant sorry if I wasn't clear on that but you're right yeah they do exist yeah it's not that they ignore them but those are I would consider those akin to something like a postc sequel setup it's just something that's prepackaged and yet uh I just wanted to build off on the idea of like the O off and the custodial nature of um like the login as that's a big change in the web 3 um Paradigm um I'm just curious because I've built using a uh a solution known as like a wallet infrastructure that allows for integration of social logins to create uh onchain accounts but to allow the uh seamless nature of social logins that most of um Society is comfortable with I'm curious your thoughts on those uh Solutions yeah did you guys have thoughts on that great question personally I don't I don't see that I don't come across it Enterprises want to you know be in control of who's accessing a blockchain or who not so we have like tight um Integrations with identity and access management whether that's coming through uh an oracle cloud service or you know federating with with a third party so that that I don't see at all yeah I I guess in Enterprise I guess that would be a little bit of an exception that you know uh when you're doing SSO for just internal like internal users the ownership of that data is centrally controlled but I think what you're talking about is more Global where it's like SAS type model and yeah the ooth type piece so yeah it's a fair question those are ex exactly those are more in the consumer space we primarily deal with Enterprises that two regulated Enterprises so there anything related to login or user access is strictly like with ano that is already present in the Enterprise for a single sign on yeah