Microsoft's Azure Launches Blockchain Kit for Ethereum
Microsoft’s blockchain-as-a-service platform, Azure Blockchain, has gained quite a bit of popularity, granted the multiple development tools featured by the platform. Now, recent reports indicate that Microsoft has just released an extension to the source-code, offering a newly-updated Blockchain Development Kit tweaked for the Ethereum blockchain.
To put things better into perspective, the kit represents an extension to the source-code associated with the Visual Studio Editor, thus allowing users to build smarter apps that are compatible with the Ethereum blockchain network. Additionally, the new source code allows developers to leverage other open-source blockchain tools, such as Truffle and Solidity, both of which offer a plethora of features for blockchain development.
As part of the press statement announcing the launch, Microsoft has mentioned that: “This proves even further the investment and dedication that Microsoft is putting forth towards the use of Blockchain ledger technologies in the Enterprise, or even on the public blockchain networks.” In other words, Microsoft clearly acknowledges the long-term potential and importance of blockchain-based applications.
The blockchain development community was pleased to find that Microsoft’s new Azure extension is open-source and hosted on GitHub. As such, developers can further contribute to improving the functionalities of the extension by reporting any issues, or submitting GitHub pull requests.
The last couple of months have brought along increased popularity for Microsoft’s Azure platform. As such, the main goal of the tool is to help streamline blockchain development efforts, via a standardized and easy-to-access building infrastructure.
Azure’s functionalities have also encouraged several high-profile companies to integrate the technology. For instance, Starbucks recently announced that they’d use Microsoft’s platform to help track coffee production and present customers with more data on the origins of their brew. Additionally, both JPMorgan and NASDAQ have announced plans of integrating and leveraging the tools provided by the Azure Blockchain Service.
Based on everything that has been outlined so far, platforms like Microsoft’s Azure are of great benefit to the market, since they allow a standardization of blockchain development efforts. This allows better inter-operability between apps, while also encouraging innovation. Simply said, it is a lot easier to build a blockchain-based app running on the Ethereum network by using Azure’s infrastructure, than doing it from step one.