Integrating a blockchain infrastructure for the whole enterprise

Any enterprise adoption of blockchain should have the goal of disrupting incumbent systems. Thinking about integration with enterprise systems of record is one way to work towards this. In this manner, an enterprise can implement blockchain-driven transaction processing and use its existing systems of record as an interface to its other applications, such as business intelligence, data analytics, regulatory interactions, and reporting.

It's vital to separate the infrastructure for enterprise blockchain technology from the business domain that uses chain technology to gain competitive advantage. Blockchain can be seen as an enterprise chain infrastructure that's invisible to businesses and operating behind the scenes, while promoting the interprise synergy between various business-driven chains. The idea is to separate the business domain from the technology that supports it. A chain application ought to be provisioned by a business domain that has a suitable trust system. The trust system, as I've stated repeatedly, is central to any blockchain endeavor, and therefore it should be appropriate to the needs of a given business application. The cost of the infrastructure and compute requirements will be dictated by the choice of trust system available to an enterprise.

By separating out the blockchain technology infrastructure, designing an architecture around a pluggable trust system by using trust intermediaries and a design that promotes flexibility, and a modular trust system, the business can focus on the business and regulatory requirements, such as AML, KYC, nonrepudiation, and so on. The technology infrastructure for blockchain applications should be open, modular, and adaptable for any blockchain variant, thereby making the blockchain endeavor easy to manage.

Interprise synergy suggests driving synergies between numerous enterprise blockchains to enable inter and intra enterprise chain (interledger) connections. In this model, the transactions would cross the various trust systems, giving visibility into the interactions to enterprise governance and control systems. Fractal visibility and the associated protection of enterprise data are important to consider when looking at these interactions between business units and external enterprises. An invisible enterprise chain infrastructure can provide a solid foundation to evolve enterprise connectors and expose APIs to make incumbent systems more chain-aware.

Interprise synergy will flourish due to conditional programmable contracts (smart contracts) between the business chains:

How can an enterprise know if it is ready for blockchain? More importantly, when considering blockchain consumption, should its focus be on integration with incumbent transaction systems, or an enterprise-aware blockchain infrastructure?

To take full advantage of the promise of enterprise blockchain, an integrated enterprise will need more than one use case and will need to drive interprise synergy. The most successful blockchain consumption strategy should focus on technology initially and then consider integration with existing enterprise business systems. This will facilitate collective understanding and accelerate enterprise adoption of the blockchain, hopefully on the path of least disruption.