Yesterday it was announced that Kaleido, the blockchain business cloud platform, will support R3’s Corda. Kaleido enables groups of companies to manage an enterprise blockchain network with nodes spanning both AWS and Azure. To date, the platform only supported Ethereum reflecting its roots as a ConsenSys startup.
Getting a blockchain to production is a challenge, and once it’s live, coordinating updates can be painful. Kaleido provides tools around governance, disaster recovery, key management and other areas.
It has some big name clients, many of which are also ConsenSys clients. For example, there’s komgo in trade finance with 16 members, including ING, MUFG and Shell. A newer initiative is the massive Covantis agribusiness consortium with the likes of Cargill, Bunge, ADM, Louis Dreyfus, Glencore and COFCO.
“We’re excited to partner with Kaleido,” said R3’s Todd McDonald. “Now is the time for consortia to develop stronger business models and position themselves successfully for the long-term. The new offering Kaleido is announcing today will support business ecosystems moving into production faster than ever before, to reap the benefits of more efficient cost structures and faster time to value.”
Nine months ago, another ConsenSys founded startup, Truffle, partnered with R3 to bring its developer tools to the Corda ecosystem as well as Hyperledger Fabric. To date, Kaleido has been closely identified with Ethereum because of its ConsenSys heritage.
R3’s CEO David Rutter is known for his dislike of Ethereum. But these two collaborations signal pragmatism on R3’s part in bringing convenient tools to its customer base and community.
Corda Network and Chainstack
Yesterday, another business cloud provider, Chainstack, announced some additional Corda features. Singapore-based Chainstack, as a competitor to Kaleido, supports the same cloud providers as well as Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud and Digital Ocean. It also works with Hyperledger Fabric and MultiChain.
Any Corda consortium can interoperate with other Corda consortia if it chooses to participate in the Corda Network, its network of networks. Yesterday Chainstack announced a new automated onboarding solution for those building solutions for the Corda Network. At a more technical level, it enables corporates to manage all Corda Network identities and node certificates.
“Without an easy and automated way for consortiums to onboard new members, companies are required to undergo costly bespoke integrations that can take months to complete,” said Laurent Dedenis, CEO of Chainstack.
Both of these startups offer huge potential efficiency savings. But with many enterprises, security trumps convenience. It’s notable that Kaleido recently achieved ISO 27001 security certification and numerous banks use its solution.
