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Although blockchain continues to dominate headlines and conversations across the technological sphere, some of the industry's biggest names remain outside the industry. However, following several high profile ads in recent months, it seems one of the great giants of technology can finally be ready to dive into the field.
Amazonia, one of the largest corporations in the world, has spent months exploring the possibilities of the blockchain. Beginning in 2018, however, these explorations were transformed into real actions after the company announced several partnerships and plans that would put in conversation about the future of the industry. With its new "Blockchain-as-a-Service" (BaaS) offer, Amazon's alliance with blockchain questions range from the theoretical to the very practical.
A multi-faceted motivation
There is little question that blockchain is fast becoming a lucrative industry. While it has long been linked to the flow and reflux of cryptocurrencies, technology has abandoned its chains and has become a key factor in innovation. Most of the change and interruption has been driven by developers, entrepreneurs and small businesses, but large companies have begun to see both its value and its virtue. This is evident from the many partnerships announced between startup blockchain and large companies.
For Amazon, however, the need to incorporate blockchain tools has two distinct sides: changing trends in the eCommerce and consumer sectors together with the search for ways to expand its increasingly
The revolutionary platform of retail
There is no doubt that Amazon continues to reign supreme in online retailing: the company accounted for about 44% of eCommerce sales in 2017 and a whopping 4% of all retail sales in the United States.
However, this dominant position comes at a price, as most companies that manage their sales through Amazon highlight a major problem. According to Eran Eyal, CEO of Shopin, a blockchain-based customer intelligence firm, "Amazon presents an enigma: while providing a huge platform for a wide distribution of products, logistical support and marketing, all at the expense of a personalized relationship between the brand and their customers. "
For many retailers, the biggest problem is the loss of information about end users, collected by Amazon. This greatly impedes the reseller's sales capacity, considering that most modern consumers prefer a personalized experience, which resellers through Amazon simply can not offer. According to an Accenture study 91% of consumers prefer to shop with companies that recognize them and remember their preferences, something that Amazon precludes. More surprisingly, 83% of shoppers are happy to share their data if this is a better experience.
Instead of getting concessions from Amazon's data collection practices, many retailers are examining alternatives and the blockchain is already providing them. Projects like Shopin, which reward users for loyalty while providing vital information to resellers, are becoming more widespread. Others like Sandblock take advantage of loyalty programs to collect user data and provide better services. For Amazon, working with these technologies could help them improve service for both consumers and businesses working through the platform. Even so, the company's efforts still seem focused on the opportunities offered by the B2B blockchain.
Expanding B2B Domain
On the business-to-business front, the value of the blockchain on Amazon and the initial splash of the company in the area are much clearer. For one thing, the B2B realm has a much more developed ecosystem for blockchain and Amazon's existing platforms are already optimized to incorporate the technology. Amazon Web Services, the corporate cloud server solution for businesses, has the pieces to easily adapt to the blockchain.
The company has also been aggressive in finding partners ready to integrate its new BaaS platform. For example, Amazon recently announced a partnership with the Qtum foundation to incorporate the development of the project dApp and the smart contract tools in AWS. Qtum, which provides a blockchain optimized for business users, will help companies quickly create blockchain applications and smart contracts without having to deal with the heavy lifting associated with the infrastructure.
More importantly, perhaps, are the many opportunities still available in the realm business intelligence for B2B solutions. These include blockchain-based supercomputers that take advantage of existing network resources to reduce costs and at the same time support greater computing power. Platforms like the blockchain-based AI computing platform, such as Tatau, which distributes unused resources on its blockchain for data processing and graphical rendering, could thrive on the massive AWS network. In addition, AWS could provide these services as part of large BaaS offerings or even as self-contained services that reduce operating costs and deliver tremendous value.
"Considering that Amazon offers a wide range of services from video streaming to cloud computing, to brick and mortar retail, however, decentralized solutions will have a sustainable advantage over AWS in the near future. Amazon (unlike Google) only provides positive ROI activity, AWS runs a low-margin model and does not significantly reduce prices, which means decentralized P2P players will always have a price advantage, "said Martin Levy , co-founder and CEO of Tatau.
For Amazon, entering the blockchain arena is more than an opportunity at this point – it has become a necessity Many of its biggest competitors in the areas of IT services and business services have been the first to move and they have already proved successful: IBM Hyperledger, for example, keeps rolling, adding partners and expanding its reach. has had an online service since the end of 2017, and even Microsoft has entered the fray with its own corporate blockchain.
"AWS is responsible for providing the infrastructure as a service, even if they have a nice set of proprietary services, their reputation is to implement and scale any infrastructure service faster and easier than anyone else out there For example, I'm not shy about saying that "88% of TensorFlow's projects are running on AWS" as TensorFlow is a technology that owns Google, so I think AWS will be (and probably will already) very serious about it being one of the best and easiest ways to implement a blockchain-based infrastructure.It not only provides models, as they already do for ethereum and hyperledger, but as a complete blockchain service interconnected with all other products available as storage, database, development, machine learning and IoT, "said Daniel Trachtenberg, CEO and founder of Zinc,
Amazon Amazon is lagging behind in the blockchain environment. The company has made some openings since 2017, but 2018 has seen it grow more aggressive in its blockchain raids. However, with the industry quickly taking on a more solid form, Amazon has its work cut off, While its use case in B2B space is obvious, ignoring blockchain in the retail sector could be detrimental to the long-term for behemoth ecommerce as buyers require a more personalized experience. While Amazon remains the de facto custodian for most online retailing, avoiding blockchain could derail this hegemony unless Ama zon chooses to join the race more seriously.
