Amazon Web Services Lists its First Blockchain Platform with Cross-Chain Capabilities

What is the significance and who will benefit?

Introduction

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has long been seen as a leader in the cloud computing industry, rivalled only by Microsoft and IBM. Everyday more enterprises are moving to cloud computing as a solution for their IT needs, pushing the market to reach over $400B USD by 2020. Although blockchain technology has been around for over a decade, the use case of this software as a cloud computing BaaS is still relatively new. It is exciting to see this ground-breaking technology be openly adopted by the largest companies in the world. Currently, the top 5 cloud computing companies are Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Salesforce & SAP. Every one of these cloud computing companies are pro blockchain by either supporting blockchain projects or developing their own blockchain solutions.

On May 24th, aelf announced that they have officially been listed on the AWS database as a BaaS provider and were the first blockchain project to offer BaaS with cross-chain capabilities. This is an essential service for complete adoption of BaaS as it ensures businesses will be able to interact and communicate with other companies running on other blockchains.

What is cloud computing

Disclaimer: The majority of content under this section is adapted from this guide.

In simple terms, cloud computing is the delivery of computing services — including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics and intelligence — over the internet to offer faster innovation, flexible resources and economies of scale. Typically, users only pay for the cloud services they use, helping to lower operating costs, run infrastructure more efficiently and scale as the businesses’ needs change.

Types of Clouds

Within the cloud computing infrastructure, there are typically three types of clouds — Public clouds, Private clouds, and Hybrid clouds. This can be related to public blockchain, private blockchain and a hybrid scenario using both public and private. Generally blockchain platforms only offer one of these architectures, but aelf offers all three, just like AWS offers all three type of cloud computing deployments.

A Public cloud is generally owned and operated by third-party service provides, delivering their servers and storage globally through the internet. In this scenario, all hardware, software and infrastructure is owned and managed by the cloud provider and the client accesses these services through an account online.

A Private cloud contrasts to a public one in that the complete infrastructure and resources are used exclusively by a single enterprise or organisation. This can be located on site, or hosted by a third party provider but run on a private network.

A Hybrid cloud, as the name suggests, incorporates both private and public elements to create a multi faceted ecosystem. By allowing data and applications to move between private and public clouds, the hybrid architecture gives businesses greater flexibility, more deployment options and helps to optimise existing infrastructure, security and compliance.

Cloud Computing Services

There are four broad categories in which cloud computing services can fall under: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Serverless and Software as a Service (SaaS). These are sometimes referred to as the cloud computing stack as they build on top of one another. The newest category which blockchain has introduced is Blockchain as a Service (BaaS), which closely correlates in services offered to PaaS. In fact, it could be seen that BaaS is a new version of PaaS.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

This is the base level of cloud computing services. With IaaS, an enterprise will rent IT infrastructure — servers and virtual machines (VMs), storage, networks or operating systems — from a cloud provider, normally on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Platform as a service refers to cloud computing services that supply an on-demand environment for developing, testing, delivering and managing software applications. PaaS is designed to make it easier for developers to quickly create web or mobile apps, without worrying about setting up or managing the underlying infrastructure of servers, storage, network and databases needed for development.

Serverless

Overlapping with PaaS, serverless computing focuses on building app functionality without spending time continually managing the servers and infrastructure required to do so. The cloud provider handles the setup, capacity planning, and server management for you. Serverless architectures are highly scalable and event-driven, only using resources when a specific function or trigger occurs.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Software as a service is a method for delivering software applications over the Internet, on demand and typically on a subscription basis. With SaaS, cloud providers host and manage the software application and underlying infrastructure, and handle any maintenance, such as software upgrades and security patching. Users connect to the application over the Internet, usually with a web browser on their phone, tablet or PC.

What is aws

AWS, a subsidiary of Amazon, is the largest Cloud Platform Provider in the world with tens of thousands of partners globally and millions of active customers. By listing aelf, AWS has provided visibility of our platform to customers including companies such as Netflix, NASA, AirBnB, Time Inc, Lionsgate, and Dow Jones. All AWS clients now have access to not only build on aelf, but to all the toolkits, documentation and supporting features.

What is aelf?

One of aelf’s strongest technological features is the ability to process tens of thousands of transactions per second. aelf Enterprise 0.7.0 beta will provide high performance blockchain BaaS through massive cloud data storage, one-click-deployment blockchain toolkits and flexible DApp development modules — all functions attuned to test and implement blockchain with ease and precision by enterprises. aelf seeks to accelerate DAPP development and expand blockchain ecosystem by making aelf more accessible for the industries seeking blockchain solutions.

The first Cross-chain blockchain project on AWS

The current state of blockchain makes it very difficult for one chain to communicate with another.If you have a dapp on ethereum, then you can only talk to others on ethereum, if you run on EOS, then it’s tough. But could blockchain really make a difference in the world if this isn’t changed? We don’t think so, so we have made the change. We are in the league with projects like Polkadot and Cosmos who also have put a strong importance on blockchain interoperability. We believe this is a key function which has been crucial in the ability for enterprises to consider aelf. We allow the interoperability between blockchains, not only in regards to the read function from other blockchains, but you can theoretically allow the triggering of a smart contract from another chain by an action of a blockchain running on aelf.

By being the first cross-chain blockchain platform on AWS, we are paving the way to shift the current status towards blockchain, to one that not only sees the solution as equal, but realizes its potential.

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