Last week Truffle, the blockchain developer tools company, announced that Microsoft is its preferred cloud and services partner. Microsoft also recently added a Truffle extension to Visual Studio Code, Microsoft’s popular software used by developers when writing code.
Truffle provides several features that aid developers when writing smart contracts for Ethereum. For example, it’s time-consuming to set up an Ethereum node to test a smart contract. So instead, Truffle provides Ganache, a private Ethereum blockchain which can be installed very quickly and easily. Truffle has been downloaded 2.7 million times with Ganache 1.6 million times and the desktop Ganache version had 100,000 unique users over the last year.
“Early on it was very clear Ethereum developers needed professional, modern development tools. With enterprise’s growing adoption of blockchain technology, Truffle recognizes the importance of this opportunity to bring our blockchain-native experience to enterprise developers across the world through our partnership with Microsoft,” said Tim Coulter, Truffle CEO and Founder.
In an email comment to Ledger Insights, Coulter said: “We think that Microsoft is the most advanced blockchain cloud provider available, who have done some amazing things for the industry.” Asked if that meant they wouldn’t consider Amazon’s AWS, he responded: “Like Microsoft, we’ll go where the customers are.” He continued: “That doesn’t stop us from solving problems with customers who would like to use AWS.”
But right now the emphasis is on Azure. “Over the course of the next 12 to 24 months, we’ll explore how to more deeply integrate Truffle’s tooling with the Azure platform, increasing developer adoption of Truffle as well as increasing the utility of Azure Blockchain Services.”
Truffle has been successfully integrated with two enterprise blockchains that are Ethereum-based. These are JP Morgan’s Quorum and AxCore from Axoni, the startup that’s working on a new DTCC derivatives platform.
“Truffle is in a unique position to guide the enterprises that will ultimately drive enterprise clients and consumers towards the adoption of the decentralized systems of tomorrow,” said Microsoft VP of Strategic Partnerships Wesley McVay. “With a strategic partner like Microsoft, this vision is quickly becoming a reality.”
Last month the company announced Truffle Teams. Built on Microsoft Azure, it’s a solution to manage and monitor blockchain applications, detect problems, and analyze smart contracts as they’re deployed. It’s free for open source users but is a core part of Truffle’s business model for other applications. Additional revenue sources for Truffle are consumer and professional training, development consulting, support services and blockchain talent staffing.
Truffle started as part of ConsenSys and was spun out earlier this year along with $3 million in funding.
