Microsoft Responds to Blockchain Buzz with New Azure Software Development Kit

As part of its appeal to enterprise software teams, Microsoft has launched the Azure Blockchain Development Kit – a new set of development tools for blockchain solutions. The kit aims to help organisations, people and devices to connect to the blockchain. It provides samples for SMS and voice interfaces, IoT device, mobile clients, backend systems and data, bots and assistants and web clients. The company stated that the kit is based off its serverless technologies, blockchain developer templates and Azure Blockchain Workbench. It builds on several capabilities, including key management, off-chain identity and data, monitoring and messaging APIs. The kit includes solutions for integrating data and systems, including tools for connecting smart contracts with documents and media, as well as interaction between contracts.  The kit includes a set of logic apps for hashing files and file related metadata, and smart contracts for files and a file registry. ‘The Azure Blockchain Development Kit is the next step in our journey to make developing end to end blockchain applications accessible, fast, and affordable to anyone with an idea. It is built atop our investments in blockchain and connects to the compute, data, messaging, and integration services available in both Azure and the broader Microsoft Cloud to provide a robust palette for a developer to realize their vision,” Marc Mercuri, principal program manager for blockchain engineering, wrote in a post. The rise of smart contracts in banking has been heralded as a game-changer for enterprises. In PwC’s 2018 global blockchain survey, 84 percent of the 600 executives from 15 territories who responded said that their organisations had at least some involvement with blockchain technology. However, skepticism remains around the efficiency of distributed ledgers to secure and streamline business processes.