Channel Will Play Key Role In Blockchain Implementations

Partners first much educate themselves about the technology, then help customers reach a comfort level with it.

…”We are at an interesting inflection point,” Chris Gonsalves, VP of research at The 2112 Group, tells Channelnomics. “Blockchain is seen as the engine for cryptocurrency and more like something interesting in enterprise environments for data integrity and immutability.”

However, there are challenges for blockchain in the enterprise, Gonsalves says. The technology can be slow, everyone with a node in the network has a view into it and there are questions of governance that need to be answered.

In addition, there is the issue of security, which has been a problem in the cryptocurrency space. In a recent report, security software vendor McAfee outlines the different ways cyber criminals have attacked blockchain in cryptocurrency scenarios, from phishing and malware to implementation vulnerabilities.

Security is something that needs to be dealt with, but it’s a different issue for the enterprise than it has been for cryptocurrency, which had huge amounts of money involved, Gonsalves notes. In a B2B environment, the wins are lower and the risk of getting caught is higher.

“It’s not the same worldwide blockchain free-for-all where we think about cryptocurrency,” the VP says.

According to Steven Povolny, head of advanced threat research at McAfee, in part the situation is one of familiarity.

“There’s just a lot of confidence, a lot of real understanding in cryptocurrency when you look at blockchain,” Povolny tells Channelnomics. “But there are a lot of questions about how it will be used industry-wide.”

> Read the full article at channelnomics.com.