Listen to episode 12 of the ‘Don’t Break The Bank’ podcast and subscribe here, Spotify, Apple or Google Podcasts:
By Matthew O’Neill, Industry Managing Director, Advanced Technology Group, VMware Office of the CTO
Who doesn’t love a bit of emerging technology and all the acronyms that go with it? From Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Cloud to Virtualisation, the world of IT is littered with hyped trends and new terms to get the geeks in all of us excited. Quite often, we see these ideas burn brightly, dominate everything, and then disappear entirely or, in some cases, they become part of the fabric of business today.
Blockchain is one of the newer technologies that is definitely on that journey. A few years back, it seemed like every technology problem was a candidate for Blockchain. It was being touted as the solution to everything, from shipping and legal to food provenance and finance. Anywhere that you needed trust (so everywhere really), there was someone talking about how Blockchain was the silver bullet to all your woes.
Thankfully, that’s calmed down a bit now. As some of the more outlandish suggestions have disappeared, we’re left with a better understanding of what Blockchain and distributed ledger technology can really do for us. At the end of 2020, we launched VMware Blockchain 1.0, an enterprise-grade Blockchain platform that meets the needs of business-critical multi-party decentralized applications.
Whilst there is clearly immense potential for Blockchain in financial services, it’s not a panacea, and it comes with its own set of challenges. Many of our customers, partners and competitors are piloting solutions and running proof of concepts. However, we all know there is a big difference from the hype of running a proof-of-concept, to implementing a solution that is truly enterprise-ready; after all, we don’t want to break the bank (sorry I could not resist). That’s why we thought it was only proper to get two of VMware’s Blockchain leaders on to our Don’t Break The Bank podcast to talk about the technology, what it means for Financial Services and what we’re offering our customers with VMware Blockchain.
Joining Brian and I were Tanya Shastri, Vice President of Product for Blockchain at VMware, and Brendon Howe, VP and General Manager of the Blockchain group of VMware. It was a wide-ranging conversation, looking at everything from where Blockchain is on the hype cycle (spoiler alert: it’s at more than one point), to covering whether it’s an answer to an existing problem or a technology looking for a challenge to solve.
I suspect, like Brian and I, many listeners, will think that they already have an idea of where Blockchain fits. However, every time we have a guest on, both of us end up with a completely different perspective on the technology, and what its potential for Financial Services providers really looks like.
This is our twelfth episode, and we’re already planning lots more for 2021. As always, we’d love to hear your feedback. What are the topics you want to hear about? Do you want to learn more from one of our past guests, or have us focus on something completely new? We’ve got some exciting speakers lined up, but we’re always keen to hear from our listeners, so please do leave a comment or send us a message. In the meantime, take care, and if there’s anything we can do to help, get in touch.
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