Microsoft has announced a new project that aims to make it easy for enterprises to adopt blockchain technology and enable businesses across various industries to build blockchain-based consortiums.

Marley Gray, Director Blockchain Business Development and Strategy at Microsoft, made the announcement about “Project Bletchley” in a blog post.

“We’ve learned a lot about essential platform principles, features and capabilities that will enable enterprises to adopt blockchain. To address this, we’re introducing Project Bletchley, which outlines Microsoft’s vision for an open, modular blockchain fabric powered by Azure, and highlights new elements we believe are key in enterprise blockchain architecture”, he said.

The project addresses common themes in the blockchain space including platform openness; integration of features like identity, key management, privacy, security, operations management and interoperability;  performance, scale, support and stability; and consortium blockchains, which are members-only, permissioned networks for consortium members to execute contracts.

Gray said that Microsoft Azure will provide the “fabric” for blockchain in the project, serving as the cloud platform where distributed applications are built and delivered. Azure will be open to a variety of blockchain protocols, supporting simple, Unspent Transaction Output-based protocols (UTXO) like Hyperledger, more sophisticated, Smart Contract-based protocols like Ethereum, and others as developed.
 

Two new concepts are introduced in Project Bletchley:

• Blockchain middleware: It will provide core services functioning in the cloud, like identity and operations management, besides data and intelligence services like analytics and machine learning. These technologies will ensure the secure, immutable operation that blockchain provides, while delivering the business intelligence and reporting capabilities business leaders and regulators demand. Newly developed middleware will work in tandem with existing Azure services, like Active Directory and Key Vault, and other blockchain ecosystem technologies, to deliver a holistic platform and set of solutions.
   
• Cryptlets: They are a new building block of blockchain technology and will enable secure interoperation and communication between Microsoft Azure, ecosystem middleware and customer technologies. Cryptlets function when additional information is needed to execute a transaction or contract, such as date and time. They will become a critical component of sophisticated blockchain systems, enabling all technology to work together in a secure, scalable way.

Project Bletchley is Microsoft’s vision to deliver Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) that is open and flexible for all platforms, partners and customers. It will introduce a modular framework which will allow consortiums to choose the best of breed components that is well-suited for the business domain they are trying to address and build their distributed applications regardless of the detail underneath.

“Bletchley is Microsoft’s architectural approach to building an Enterprise Consortium Blockchain Ecosystem. To be clear, this is not a new blockchain stack. It is Microsoft’s approach to bring distributed ledger (blockchain) platforms into the enterprise to build real solutions addressing real business problems while keeping the platform open”, the project white paper reads.