This is the second in a series of blogs on current activities, use cases, POCs, and pilots with Blockchain in the financial services industry. In this one, I look at some of what Wipro is doing to support banks and financial services companies in deploying Blockchain solutions.

Blockchain technology & services

Wipro has been active for the past three years in offering Blockchain consulting and development. During that time, it has worked primarily with Ethereum, and Hyperledger, to develop its Blockchain solutions. Wipro has decided to be agnostic about technology partners because of the rapid pace of development and innovations in Blockchain technology, but it does have partnerships for cloud-delivered services on Blockchain. Current partnerships for cloud-delivered Blockchain services include:

• IBM Bluemix
• Microsoft Azure DevTest Labs
• AWS.

In Blockchain, Wipro provides the following sets of services:

• Advisory: engagement with thought leaders and CXOs to ideate strategies, plan roadmaps, and build use cases
• Technology: building POCs, pilots and production solutions with clients
• Infrastructure:  BLaaS – Blockchain Lab-as- a-Service (which allows clients’ internal teams to experiment and co-develop with Blockchain technology).
• Blockchain network services : to build Blockchain networks

Use cases & POCs

Wipro has developed use cases and POCs across industries. In banking and financial services (excluding its insurance use cases), Wipro has focused its efforts on five critical use cases to date:

• Banking:
  • Skip trace
  • Cross-border payments
  • Trade Finance
• Capital markets:
  • Triparty collateral management
  • Delivery-versus-Payment (DVP)

Each of these use cases has active POCs deployed on Ethereum and Hyperledger. Blockchain POCs could potentially use additional technologies. For example, skip trace could be deployed in concert with Wipro HOLMES Artificial Intelligence Platform, to engage predictive analytics on where the skipped person may have gone to.

Business executives at clients are the primary buyers of Blockchain engagements. They are concerned with POCs which provide flexibility, quick deployment, and scalability. To facilitate achieving these goals, Wipro has been engaged in the following initiatives:

• Flexibility and Quick deployment: Wipro has been developing a set of use case frameworks to identify what works, including required technical tools, business cases, and product ecosystems. These frameworks of best practices codify learnings as well as challenges to rapid, effective deployment of Blockchain technology
• Scalability: Wipro has been a launch partner for the Enterprise Ethereum Foundation. In that capacity, Wipro has done extensive testing of scalability on various variants of Blockchain technology, including Ethereum and Hyperledger, which has provided it with the expertise to understand the possibilities and requirements for scaling a Blockchain solution for production grade enterprise level deployments.

Also, Wipro actively promotes and expands its Blockchain partnerships to broaden its capabilities in this rapidly developing ecosystem. 

Summary

The key to successful business use of Blockchain technology is the size of the network using the Blockchain. Network size is impacted by adoption, which is in turn impacted by cost incurred and potential value received. Successful technology services vendors must work on building that ecosystem with their clients for it to be successful. Technology services vendors will be able to have the biggest impact on cost reduction by reducing the ideation and buildout costs. However, insight into how technology interacts with business operations will provide precision into how value will be delivered. Value delivered is even more compelling for prospective network participants than cost issues in their decision process.

It will take several years for large-scale adoption of successful Blockchain ecosystems to be operational. The primary driver of successful adoption will be the development of large, effective ecosystems of participants. Technology services vendors have a large part to play in identifying a realistic roadmap and support the realization of that journey.