In a November 6 post on the Microsoft Azure blog site by Matthew Kerner general manager, Microsoft Azure, new blockchain related innovation was announced to simplify and accelerate blockchain adoption.
Microsoft Azure Blockchain Tokens
According to Kerner, since launching Azure Blockchain Service, Azure customers have asked for a simple mechanism to tokenize physical or digital assets to accelerate blockchain deployments. With the release of Azure Blockchain Tokens, he wrote, the idea is to simplify the ability to define, create, and manage compliant tokens that are built on industry standards.
"Azure Blockchain Tokens (preview) provide pre-built templates for common scenarios and will support a gallery of templates created by partners in the future. With this latest offering, we can now offer customers an end-to-end experience of easily creating and managing tokens for physical or digital assets via Azure Blockchain Tokens (preview), in addition to managing the blockchain network itself via Azure Blockchain Service."
Blockchain Data Manager and Additional Ledger Choice
According to Kerner, Azure Blockchain Service has seen strong adoption since its launch, with customers using it to simplify the management and formation of their blockchain networks so they can focus on business logic.
The Azure Blockchain Service is being enhanced the preview of blockchain data manager. "Blockchain data manager (preview) is a new feature of Azure Blockchain Service that captures blockchain ledger data, transforms it (including decoding encrypted event and property state data), and then delivers that data to multiple sources via Azure Event Grid to off-chain databases like Azure Cosmos DB or Azure SQL Database. Blockchain data manager (preview) supports both public and private transaction data and greatly simplifies the cumbersome task of integrating existing applications with data that sits on a blockchain ledger," wrote Kerner.
In addition to simplifying blockchain data integration into existing applications, it is important to offer choice and flexibility in Azure Blockchain Service, he added. As a result, Corda Enterprise joins Ethereum as an additional distributed ledger technology available within the service. For customers who prefer Hyperledger Fabric, an Azure Marketplace template using Azure Kubernetes Service is available for use.
Investing In Developer Tools
Kerner added that the company is continuing to build on its investments for blockchain developers with updates to the Azure Blockchain Development Kit for Ethereum extension for Visual Studio Code. The investments will help to improve the productivity of developers, whether they are building an application on top of a blockchain network, or connecting a backend system to produce or consume blockchain data.