It can often be difficult to keep track of assets and transactions in a business, and that is where Blockchain is unleashing its potential. It is revolutionising enterprises with its shared ledger technology. There are numerous, and specialised, use cases of Blockchain but the adoption is nascent in most industries. There are a few early adoption use cases of Blockchain, however, which have the potential to replace traditional systems and processes.
In the global Ecosystm Mobility study, organisations are asked about the adoption of Blockchain as a means of authentication. Industries that appear most open to Blockchain adoption are those that have also embraced IoT for tracking and traceability.
Adoption of Blockchain for Authentication – An Industry Comparison
Across industries Blockchain technology is being used primarily for these use cases:
Supply Chain Traceability
Supply chain traceability allows producers, retailers, and consumers to track products from source to consumer. It connects all points in the supply chain, creating transparency and trust in the product. When a business comprises complex processes, a large and dispersed workforce, multiple locations and different operations, a lot of administrative and regulatory frameworks are required to manage and control the supply chain. Functions such as order management, procurement, import, delivery, tracking, and invoicing have their own unique set of requirements and processes. In several cases, especially across primary and retail industries, business complexity has been reduced with the use of Blockchain. The technology allows for improving digital assets and inventory tracking for better services and processes.
Blockchain is ensuring food safety by providing a complete view of the supply chain and creating a real-time trail of products – allowing a ‘farm to fork’ view. Walmart is a good example of how retailers can use Blockchain technology to ensure that they sell fresh produce. Fresh produce shipments can be tracked as they change hands from the farmers to the middlemen, to the distributor and finally to the store. This can have an enormous impact on containing food-borne diseases and food contamination. Not only does Blockchain increase food safety, it ensures fresher food since it secures production and packing dates.
Intellectual Property Intermediary (IPI), an organisation established under Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry, is an affiliate of Enterprise Singapore and focuses on technology innovations in the industry that can empower enterprises to develop new processes, products, and services. IPI has identified Blockchain Technology for Food as an area where the industry can benefit from innovation. The ecosystem will also benefit from the information gathered, with the potential to further improve the production chain.
Fraud Prevention
Taking supply chain visibility a step further, Blockchain technology is being used for fraud prevention – especially payment fraud. Financial transactions are complex and involve multi-step processes and human intervention – involving collaterals, settlement, currency denominations, third-party mediation, and so on. It is often the prime target for fraudsters. The most common instances of fraud involve bank to bank transactions, mobile payments, and digital identity fraud, essentially by tampering with ID or using it an unsanctioned way – providing unauthorised access to digital systems and falsifying information.
Blockchain helps automate preventive measures enabling real-time information sharing which is transmitted on a chain of connected devices where all the nodes in a system verify the transaction. Since it stores the data on several nodes and every other user on the network has a copy of the entire data on the Blockchain, it is virtually impossible to hack or destroy it completely.
Earlier this year, Standard Chartered Singapore showcased their cross-border trade finance transaction which digitalises trade processes and financing documentation. Blockchain enabled the transaction between parties by digitally streamlining the documentation process while providing security and transparency between the partners. Not only does it support the clients’ entire supply chain, but it also creates a transparent way to provide same-day trade financing.
Non-profit organisation BitGive Foundation uses Blockchain technology to provide greater visibility to their donors into the receipt of funds and how they are used by sharing financial information and project results in real-time. The GiveTrack project is built on Bitcoin and Blockchain and is a user-friendly, data-centered and comprehensive user interface. People making donations can precisely track the donations and how the funds were used.
Legal & Compliance
In industries that have higher Compliance & Regulatory requirements, Blockchain can enable safe, secure, and scalable data-sharing. The industry is seeing instances of self-executing contracts, smart registries, secure and time-stamped documents with Blockchain. Blockchain is introducing abilities to record events for a long duration which might include indisputable claims, criminal records, case procedures to support the potential legal work.
Dubai launched a city wide blockchain strategy. Dubai Land Department is implementing blockchain to make property transactions secure, transparent and immutable, thereby reducing fraud and eliminating reams of physical documents. This impacts the entire ecosystem – customers, developers, the land department, utility providers, payment channels, and municipalities – to work in collaboration.
Shipping companies that need to enforce global contracts daily are also benefitting from Blockchain. However, the biggest use cases will eventually come from the Public Sector – across citizen services and criminal justice systems. For instance, National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) is testing Blockchain e-voting facilities. The project is still at the pilot stage and aims to tokenised voting which makes it easy to conduct test and audit for the votes. This allows the regulating authorities to access real-time data, and at the same time, provides means to audit the regulators.
Cybersecurity
73% of global organisations believe that a data breach is inevitable, according to the Ecosystem Cybersecurity Study, and only 18% of them use some form of tokenisation and other cryptographic tools. Blockchain technology offers several capabilities in mitigating cybersecurity risks and detecting and combating cyber attacks. For example, Blockchain can be used to prevent DDoS attacks, and crypto secured biometric keys can replace passwords providing robust ID authentication systems, more secure DNS and decentralised storage. Blockchain implementation can also prevent man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks by encrypting the data in transit so it is not manipulated during the transmission or accessed by unauthorised parties – thus maintaining data integrity and confidentiality.
Lockheed Martin, a US security company, is implementing Blockchain into their protocol. The company is enhancing Blockchain cybersecurity protocol measures in engineering systems, supply chain risk management, and software development. This includes researching on expanding on Blockchain capabilities protect their weapons development unit and make it incorruptible.
eGovernment initiatives will also benefit from Blockchain. The biggest stumbling block for providing eservices has always been cybersecurity, where the Government cannot be sure that the citizens are able to access their own records in a secure manner. It has always been a question of responsibility and liability – is the Government liable for a data breach that happens because of a citizen’s fault? Estonia is using Blockchain to protect their digital services such as electronic health records, legal records, police records, banking information, covering data and devices from attacks, misuse, and corruption.
Customer Experience
The ultimate benefit of Blockchain will be realised when it is used to enhance Customer Experience (CX). It brings transparency in doing business, gives on-demand data visibility and fosters trust in customers. A company that shows all transactions between the company and the customer, and in a secure manner, can create a better relationship, increase overall customer satisfaction and retain their customers in a competitive market. For example, Blockchain technology can allow more secure and transparent loyalty programmes, through token creation that can be redeemed on-demand, without customer service intervention. Singapore Airlines’ KrisFlyer structures their payments and loyalty programme with Blockchain. Their digital wallet enables members to convert KrisFlyer miles into KrisPay miles instantly to pay for their purchases at partner merchants. The users can pay through an application by scanning a QR code at a merchant’s location .
Customers will increasingly look for ease of use and security in their transactions. Bank of America has filed a patent for Blockchain powered ATM, for securing records and authenticating business and personal data. This will boost the transaction rate and facilitate various transaction experience with full encryption and security. Blockchain-enabled transactions can be registered and completed with greater easy while lowering the transaction costs for customers and keeping the network safe.
While Blockchain technology is continuing to evolve for a range of applications and industries, it comes with its own share of risks. Adoption should not be based on the hype around the technology but should be evaluated carefully. The starting point should obviously be a real business needs analysis.
Speak with an expert today to evaluate whether your organisation can benefit from Blockchain.
The 5th VeeamON event held in Miami Beach recently, attracted around 2,000 customers and partners. The 2-day conference is the annual Veeam gathering of mainly IT admins to learn about and get certification for Veeam’s latest product releases. Veeam Co-Founder and EVP, Sales and Marketing, Ratmir Timashev provided Veeam’s update on business affairs and strategy.
Business Updates
What Timashev describes as Veeam’s ‘Act I’ has seen them emerge as a leader in backup and availability solutions for virtual environments over the last 10 years. ‘Act I’ further helped Veeam reach the milestone of US$1 billion in sales – over the current 12 months period – which elevates Veeam into an exclusive club of only 34 software companies that have achieved this milestone (and very few privately owned software companies have achieved this globally). Going forward, Veeam will continue to focus on their Hybrid Cloud strategy and what they describe as ‘Act II’ of their growth journey.
In line with the market moving from on-premises to cloud to hybrid environments, the next phase of growth will focus on adding hybrid cloud functionality to their existing hypervisor- and physical agent-centred software portfolio. By continuing their strategy on partnering and channels, the solutions are designed to make it easy for service providers to deliver Veeam as managed services to the market.
Ecosystm Comment. Ecosystm’s ongoing Cloud research shows that almost 100% of companies have shifted at least one workload onto the cloud which makes cloud undoubtedly mainstream. Despite that broad adoption we see cloud maturity still at an early stage as the number of SaaS workloads and the complexity of on-premises and cloud integration will increase over time. Our research shows that companies currently use an average of 3 separate SaaS applications which is expected to double over the next 12 months.
Stages of Cloud Management
Organisations’ requirements to manage their data assets in the hybrid world will mature in tandem with their expanded cloud footprint. Veeam describes this path as the ‘5 Stages of Cloud Management’.
Figure 1: Veeam’s Stages of Cloud Management
Veeam sees the majority of the market currently sitting at stage 1 or 2 providing a strong pipeline and growth path in taking customers along their ‘Act II’ journey.
Ecosystm Comment. We would raise some caution as the execution of this strategy may play out as more challenging than anticipated. Our research shows that a majority of companies – especially in emerging markets – see cloud as a means to shift the responsibility of data protection and availability, onto their cloud providers. The ongoing global Ecosystm Cybersecurity research reveals that nearly half the organisations rely solely on their public cloud provider to secure even their most sensitive data.
Figure 2: Perception on Public Cloud Security
This finding is concerning when competitiveness has increasingly moved away from the traditional measures such as cost, quality and time to a company’s data and IP assets. So Veeam is urged to equip their partners and sales team with a strong educational message that the responsibility of data protection and availability cannot be shifted solely onto the cloud provider. The responsibility and accountability remains with the organisation and has to be managed across the increasingly hybrid environments.
Product Announcements
Keeping with the tradition, Veeam leveraged VeeamON 2019 as the platform for a number of product releases and announcements. In alignment with the business strategy, most of the new features support data management in hybrid cloud environments as well as new integrations and features for SaaS and Cloud platforms.
The most anticipated release of version 10 of Veeam’s flagship Availability Suite has not yet happened. Announced at VeeamON 2017, Version 10 will be released towards the second half of 2019. While the delay may be of concern, we would give Veeam credit for adopting a true SaaS model for their product development process. They have constantly released newer features and functionality to the current suite, opting to release some features faster to market to answer to specific customer demands at the time, such as centralised agent management support and Universal Storage API support. The key new features of Availability Suite 9.5 Update 4 include easy management of cloud migration and cloud mobility, cloud-native backup, cost-effective data retention, and portable cloud-ready licensing, increased security and data governance.
Veeam Availability Orchestrator v2 is the second generation of Veeam’s DR orchestration platform reducing the manual processes to achieve auditable DR, operational recovery and platform migrations. With increasing industry regulations this capability could give organisations of all sizes and resources the tools to prove and proactively remediate service level agreement (SLA) attainment for internal and external compliance regulations and audits with extensive reporting and compliance capabilities.
Nutanix Mine with Veeam is another product which received a lot of interest at VeeamON. With availability announced for late 2019, Mine is a partnership with Nutanix to provide more comprehensive and affordable solutions for secondary storage layers. Similar joint offerings have also been announced with ExaGrid. Mine provides Nutanix hyper-converged infrastructure with highly integrated Veeam Backup & Replication solutions to provide easy deployment and scaling, faster time to value and standardised IT operations management.
Ecosystm Comment. Ecosystm’s research shows that regulatory requirements are key to organisations’ propensity to invest in data protection and availability solutions. They are often built into the organisations’ risk management programmes as well.
Figure 3: Drivers of Continued Focus on Cybersecurity
Availability Orchestrator v2 presents a strong entry point for Veeam to start the discussions for a more holistic data management solution. Providing the automation of the DR orchestration, scenario planning and auditable DR documentation strengthens Veeam’s claim to be the rightful owner of the Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) discussion. Furthermore, although it may be from leftfield, Ecosystm sees a great opportunity for some partnerships with Cybersecurity insurance companies to make Veeam Availability Orchestrator an accepted standard for Cybersecurity premium assessments and rebates. Ecosystm has seen a rapid rise of Cybersecurity insurance adoption with nearly 50% of global organisations already signed on to different policies. With adoption expected to accelerate over the coming years, Cybersecurity insurers could present a new route to market that is not in competition to its existing network of more than 60,000 partners.
Looking Ahead
Veeam has announced ‘Act II’ as the second stage of growth to carry on from their initial virtual machine-centred availability solution. The strategy follows the natural evolution and path of the market and will not require a major rethink or restructure of the Veeam business.
What is changing is the scale of business in geographical coverage, product portfolio and most importantly the Veeam partner ecosystem. In the same way that Veeam expanded their breadth in ‘Act I’ from the original VMware hypervisor backup to the broader hypervisor market and core infrastructure integrations, ‘Act II’ will require expansion across the key cloud platforms, exponentially growing SaaS landscape and the different tiered infrastructure providers.
Veeam’s product development teams have been one of the main beneficiaries of Veeam’s $500 million fund raising exercise earlier in 2019 (investors include Insight Venture Partners & Canada Pension Plan Investment Board) as they invested further in organic internal development instead of acquiring and integrating third party capabilities.
Geographical expansion is another area where the $500 million has been invested in. Veeam currently sits at 350,000 customers with 4,000 being added on a monthly basis. Emerging markets such as Asia Pacific are the engines of the growth but there are still markets and partnerships to be explored and developed. Across Asia Pacific alone Veeam opened 4 new offices in the first 5 months of 2019 and further expansions are planned for the months to come. The race for scale is essential to execute on ‘Act II’ but it brings operational challenges to scale in tandem with their operations while maintaining the culture that made Veeam what they are.
Ecosystm Comment. There is no doubt that there is a lot of work ahead of Veeam in executing on ‘Act II’. We have seen early proof that execution is following strategy, with new partnerships in the tiered storage space (such as Nutanix and ExaGrid), new products focussed across mainstream SaaS applications such as Office365 and tighter cloud integrations with Azure and AWS. There is currently lesser compatibility with Alibaba Cloud and no integration with Google which would be essential to accelerate their growth especially in Asia Pacific which has been highlighted as Veeam’s growth engine. The SaaS landscape presents an even tougher challenge for Veeam. Veeam Backup for Office365 has demonstrated the strong opportunity of workload-based availability solutions but developing the same capability across hundreds or thousands of diverse SaaS applications will present challenges. At the same time, we agree with Veeam’s focus on going deep into their solutions integration with the key partners and workloads that present the greatest opportunity today rather than spreading resources to put breadth over depths at this stage.
In 2013 Ratmir Timashev predicted to reach $1 billion within 6 years which was achieved just in time for VeeamON 2019. There were no new predictions made for ‘Act II’ but we see Veeam on the right path to announce tangible progress on their ‘Act II’ execution at VeeamON 2020 in Las Vegas.
On 17 May 2019, the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong signed a formal arrangement, to step up collaboration in the areas of trade, defence, cybersecurity, science and technology, and arts and culture.
To strengthen cybersecurity, the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) and the National Cyber Policy Office (NCPO) of New Zealand inked an agreement on information sharing, cybersecurity and capacity building in the region. A new Cyber Security Arrangement will support greater information exchange, including through an annual cybersecurity dialogue between the two countries. The aim of the agreement is to increase information exchange, prevent incidents and threats and follow best practices on data, infrastructure, and systems protection.
Commenting on the announcement Ecosystm Principal Advisor, New Zealand-based Jannat Maqbool, said, “Engaging internationally on cybersecurity research and initiatives is fundamental given the trans-boundary nature of the cyberspace. As both nations become more digitised and connected, a collaboration will enable each to leverage strengths in key areas to develop a multi-pronged approach to cybersecurity. Both countries will also be in a better position to weigh in on the development of rules-based international order for cyberspace.”
Echoing these comments, Ecosystm Board Advisor, and former Global Head, Digital Development Unit at the World Bank, Randeep Sudan explains how cybersecurity is critical to the growth and development of the digital economy. “Mitigating cyber risks will require coordinated action by multiple stakeholders, including governments, the private sector, academia, and non-governmental organisations,” Sudan says. These bilateral and multilateral G2G partnerships are, therefore, an essential piece in tackling cyber threats. “Given that Singapore and New Zealand are leading players in cyberspace, a G2G collaboration between them will offer learnings of immense value to other governments,” Sudan continues.
Due to Ecosystm’s own close ties with New Zealand, and considering that we are headquartered in Singapore, we are ourselves actively engaged in promoting the dialogue between New Zealand and Singapore. Ecosystm CEO Amit Gupta and Chief Operating Officer, Ullrich Loeffler are in New Zealand this week to participate in Techweek New Zealand (an annual initiative to promote and build awareness for new technologies and innovation in New Zealand) to meet key stakeholders and attend industry events.
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Commenting on the sidelines of Techweek, Amit Gupta gave his thoughts on the agreement, “Both New Zealand and Singapore are in hyper-innovation mode at the moment. With the advent of Blockchain and AI especially spurring the growth of the Fintech ecosystem in New Zealand, there is strong potential gains in engaging with the already thriving Singapore Fintech ecosystem.”
New Zealand and Singapore are not only model free markets, but also have been key proponents of data privacy over the years, an area that requires a serious look, as we start to apply new emerging technologies such as AI. “There is an opportunity for these two forward-looking nations to take it a step further to build an actionable Data Privacy Corridor to streamline the Fintech collaboration between them,” Gupta added. “With New Zealand being an export economy and Singapore, a strong services economy, this would enable a much more seamless collaboration between these two countries.”
The collaboration does not end at cybersecurity and Fintech. As part of the partnership, a joint work programme is being negotiated, starting with two flagship collaborations – an advanced data science research platform to build New Zealand’s data science capability; and a food and nutrition cooperative science programme with a focus on ‘future foods’. Both countries have different areas of expertise, and collaborative measures such as these, give them an opportunity to share best practices that will prove mutually beneficial.
AT&T became the first North American operator to join the ranks of the Global Telco Security Alliance formed by Singtel, Etisalat, Softbank, and Telefónica. The alliance which was formed last year in April 2018 in a pact to amalgamate the capabilities of telecommunications operators on security aspects and fight collectively against cyber attacks.
AT&T joined as an equal member with other founding members of the group. Over the past few years, AT&T has been building its cybersecurity capabilities and has recently acquired AlienVault– a commercial and open source developer – to offer a platform that integrates and automates point security products to manage cyber attacks. AlienVault has been rebranded as AT&T Cybersecurity, and includes consulting and managed security services. Similarly, at the end of 2018, Singtel revealed the brand ‘Trustwave’ that combines the capabilities of partners such as Optus and NCS, to provide a comprehensive security suite and services to help organisations fight cybercrime.
With the rising risks of cyber-attacks, these initiatives are providing a synergistic front and helping organisations to analyse and act faster against cyber threats. The alliance plans to expand its global footprint and span across APAC, Europe, MEA and America.
Speaking about the alliance, Alex Woerndle, Principal Analyst Cybersecurity, Ecosystm says that, “Similar collaborations exists within other industries already – most commonly they use regular information-sharing sessions with the collective security teams to discuss what each is experiencing, what strategies and tactics have worked or failed, and provide details on the type and nature of attacks. The telcos – at a minimum – should be collaborating at that level. But given the global nature of this alliance, they will need to consider how they can aggregate threat information and share it in a more agile way on a day to day, hour to hour and minute to minute basis.”
The alliance accounts for a significant percentage of the overall traffic and is a tangible example of companies taking steps to fight cyber attacks. “As the threat landscape continues to expand there is an opportunity to broaden the intelligence – sharing what they collectively gather and analyse, to strengthen the defences of the broader market not just in their local geographies, and to impact globally”, says Woerndle. “Think of the immense opportunities to share intelligence gathered collectively by all the major telcos, to proactively prevent attacks on their clients – from other enterprises down to small/medium businesses and consumers. Law enforcement could benefit from the global telco collaboration, also”