Supply chain management is embracing blockchain technology.
Demand will push revenues for this technology to $10.6 billion by 2023, according to a new report from ABI Research.
“The success of blockchain in financial tech has prompted significant investment in deploying the underlying infrastructure for application development and testing in other industries," says Michela Menting, research director at ABI Research.
Tech giants such as IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, SAP, HPE and Oracle, among others, are pushing Blockchain-as-a-Service for first movers, often enabling integration with their existing enterprise software and cloud services,” Menting added.
A number of high-profile proofs-of-concept and pilots with leading multinationals is driving both interest and increased investment in the technology.
Most notably, use cases for tackling endemic problems in the global supply chain are proving particularly popular. Blockchain is being leveraged to resolve complex issues around transparency, efficiency, and cost.
Successful pilots run by the likes of Walmart and Maersk in tracking and monitoring products on a global scale are emerging into commercialized platforms that will be market-ready in the next few months.
The successful transition of these test cases to commercialization in such a global industry will in turn drive efforts to deploy blockchain to address barriers and risks in other sectors too, especially in adjacent industrial markets. The blockchain startup scene is dynamically rising to the challenge, with the brunt of activity concentrated in North America, Europe, and selected Asia-Pacific countries. Some highly innovative companies tackling the supply chain space include Blockfreight, Modum, OriginTrail, Skuchain, Sweetbridge, SyncFab, and T-Mining.
