Cloud and Blockchain

Even though Cloud has evolved over the years, its security and reliability are still questioned by many. Chief Information officers remain cautious about transferring their mission-critical processes on to the cloud. Pricing for cloud services remains high, particularly when the cloud gets used for applications with significant workloads.

Blockchain technology is seen by many experts as the platform to ease the inefficiencies of Cloud. By running on a decentralised ecosystem, cloud computing costs will get significantly reduced. The concerns over data security will be eliminated as traceability applies to every single transaction on the cloud and existing data manipulation will cease to exist.

Unlike the traditional database architecture (including cloud), where data is stored on a centralised server, blockchain is decentralised and stored on machines of all participants. The high costs of cloud computing can be attributed to centralisation. Now with the blockchain technology, cloud computing can be decentralised thereby reducing costs, increase efficiency while eliminating the risk of data breaches. Blockchain-powered cloud solutions will rely on idle computational power from a pool of providers which will include individual computer users.

Two of the major cloud players in the world have entered the blockchain space. Both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud have recently announced partnerships to deliver distributed digital ledger technology to the cloud and to grant developers access to their suites of cloud tools. Blockchain is still far from taking the place of cloud computing when it comes to providing the computing power necessary to run big data applications.