Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) and its Impact on Digital Business Development

The finance community has embraced crypto ledger innovations today, leading to a constant emergence of new blockchain-based technological solutions. Today, these solutions are employed in a wide range of applications for both personal use and the business environment, the latter of which is undergoing a significant digitalization process. Blockchain as a Service, or BaaS, is one such option that enables one to fully utilize distributed ledgers and is primarily intended for enhancing digital business opportunities.

This article will tell you what Blockchain as a Service technology is, in which areas it is used today, and what advantages it offers to digital business. You will also learn about several global corporations that already offer such services.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• BaaS blockchain solutions are a set of cloud services and tools for creating or renting a blockchain network within a digital business.

• BaaS solutions have found applications in many areas of life today, the main ones being healthcare, the oil industry, insurance, real estate and tourism.

• The main advantages that BaaS systems offer are flexibility, customization and data security, and the main providers of such solutions today are Microsoft Corporation, Amazon, Oracle and IBM.

What is Blockchain as a Service?

Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) is an innovative model that enables businesses to use cloud infrastructure to create, host, and use their own blockchain apps, smart contracts, and other blockchain-related systems. In BaaS, cloud service providers are the ones who are responsible for carrying out the tasks and processes. In essence, these solutions represent a bridge between the enterprise blockchain platform and companies and work relatively similar to the Software as a Service (SaaS) approach.

The popularity of blockchain technology has soared in recent years, with its use being extended beyond cryptocurrency transactions. The increased demand for hosting applications has led to the growth in the use of Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) solutions, which are now being adopted by many different industries.

Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft have already begun to develop tools and platforms that allow enterprises to use cryptographic ledger technology as a service, that is, without upfront investment in infrastructure and training for specialized skills. They plan to create smart contracts and other decentralized architectures that can be used for various purposes, and cloud platforms will make the technology available to many organizations.

FAST FACT

• According to statistics, the market value of BaaS solutions as of 2022 equals 1.32 billion U.S. dollars. It is expected that by 2029 this figure will grow by more than 25 times and reach 35.8 billion U.S. dollars.

Practical Application Areas of Blockchain as a Service Technology

The BaaS solution can be used in projects of any level – from startups to multinational corporations. And all this without investing in the development of your own blockchain networks. Today, within the framework of practical application, BaaS cloud services effectively solve many tasks, including supply chain management, accounting and statistics, protection of the confidentiality of customer records, real estate property registrations, and even ICO launches. Below are the main areas of practical application of BaaS technology today.

1. Healthcare

BaaS technology can support the processes that underpin the global economy. In particular, blockchain in healthcare can process medical records, the logistics of drugs and medical equipment, and speed up claims processing. Health insurance can assess customer risks in real-time, simplify checks, reduce fraud, and improve customer service. Healthcare providers can easily take full advantage of BaaS to solve many problems. In addition, the blockchain network will help monitor and determine the authenticity of medical products to prevent counterfeits.

2. Oil & Gas Industry

As today's oil and gas niche is one of the most important economic sectors, blockchain adoption and use of BaaS in its business processes will help automate oil and gas production process control systems, ensure harmonization of commodity nomenclature to ensure better efficiency of warehouse accounting systems, industrial production facilities and other essential facilities within the oil and gas field that are directly involved in the organization of oil, gas and other forms of energy production. In addition, blockchain solutions will help better organize financial flows and significantly reduce manual labor in accounting departments.

3. Travel

The travel industry has great potential in terms of using BaaS systems. Today, the practical application of such blockchain solutions is found within the organization of dispatch activities in various airports around the world, helping to improve the efficiency of international airline reservation systems and creating new passenger databases. For example, the use of a single database to summarize all the identifiers of passengers can be a great solution that will help solve the issues related to visa registration and conditions at border crossings, as well as help with the identification of false documents.

4. Media & Entertainment

The use of BaaS technologies within the entertainment content industry will, foremost, help to properly organize the process of mutual settlements between social networks and online platforms (like YouTube) and content creators. BaaS solutions will help to keep track of all elements of intellectual property within the platform that stores the content, to distribute revenues from content sales more accurately, using blockchain financial service, etc. Moreover, such solutions will enable smart contracts to instantly pay content creators.

5. Insurance

Insurance is one industry that must catch up in the technology race today. Insurance companies have to deal with too much paper and financial information daily, which is overwhelming. Insurance procedures take up a lot of time, and limited human, technical and operational resources can result in processing delays.

Integrating blockchain services based on BaaS solutions will help the insurance industry utilize distinct digital methods to confirm transactions within insurance cases, automate insurance policy processes, and reduce the possibility of fraudulent situations and unfair approaches to damage assessment.

6. Real Estate

The main advantage BaaS systems can give in real estate is the exclusion of the intermediary party, as blockchain guarantees the reliability of the entire content of the database. Transition to such technology will seriously reduce corporate and public administration costs, which as a consequence, can help to achieve the following goals: instant execution of documents; elimination of the need for repeated operations with documents because of the possibility of their loss or damage is excluded; the possibility of a quick check of the status of the developer's contributions and the status of his documents.

A decentralized, blockchain-based depository system for the record-keeping of mortgages will help to speed up and reduce the cost of storing, changing, and moving mortgages many times over. The scheme and roles of the participants remain the same as now, but depositories will create a shared database, and all transactions within it will be carried out according to the logic of smart contracts.

Benefits of Using BaaS Platforms in Digital Business

Blockchain systems within the BaaS model are designed to help digital businesses in solving various tasks and, having a large set of advantages, have a high potential for development and practical application in all spheres of human activity. Let's consider the main advantages that digital businesses can get as a result of using BaaS solutions.

• High Level of Security and Data Protection

With a scalable blockchain network development and management service, it is possible to control all permission levels, nodes, and keys from a single control panel. In practice, almost every BAAS vendor offers a dashboard to easily access all key elements.

The process of encrypting ledger information also adds security and provides the highest privacy within BaaS products. Moreover, the cybersecurity in these solutions is remarkable in that it completely eliminates the possibility of any fraudulent actions.

• Flexibility and Solution Efficiency

The best part of most BaaS blockchain systems is that they offer a wide range of consensus algorithms for use in digital business process infrastructures. They provide a high level of integration of different kinds of applications and system utilities from other developers to meet the needs of any given company.

Moreover, many BaaS services provide access to powerful blockchain tools, such as flexible switching protocols, dynamic pooling, and physical resource management, sufficient to make a company's business processes efficient and increase overall productivity.

• Transparency and Openness

Solutions based on the BaaS model can offer digital businesses simple tools for blockchain project deployment using smart contracts and various consensus protocols that ensure the openness and transparency of any element of the blockchain network. This will allow you to track all transactions and control the processes involved in keeping any BaaS solution up and running.

Today, any BaaS external hosting provider offers a full range of functional blockchain solutions to ensure the high performance of digital business regardless of its type, including full support and maintenance during the operation of these solutions for quick responses to all arising difficulties and problems.

• Adaptivity and Customization

Blockchain applications offered within the framework of digital business are scalable and, therefore, can be adapted and customized to meet any company's needs and requirements. Moreover, the latest developments in the field of blockchain and artificial intelligence merge will potentially be able to quickly and efficiently customize BaaS solutions according to the specifics of business processes and the direction of the company's activity. Such solutions will help to significantly improve the overall efficiency of business operations, as all systems will work smoothly, adapting to all changes.

• Economy and Usability

Since BaaS model solutions are inherently White Label solutions, their use is convenient on the one hand and cost-effective on the other. Thanks to flexible pricing plans offered by any BaaS provider, even small startups with limited budgets can start using blockchain tools to develop and promote their business. BaaS is cross-platform, flexible and customizable, allowing for easy integration into any company's information infrastructure.

Major Companies Supplying Cloud-Based Blockchain Business Solutions

In today's digital business environment and high competition, BaaS has become a breath of fresh air for companies that are interested in implementing systems based on distributed registries. Today, there are a number of companies that develop and implement complex BaaS tools for both classic and digital businesses.

• IBM

IBM BaaS platform comes with a multitude of business solutions. IBM's cloud ecosystem is one of the ready-to-implement, integrated, and fully functional solutions on the market. Using blockchain as an IBM service application, a company can incorporate blockchain and manage the interface and system more efficiently.

The features of working with this IBM suite of solutions give you the flexibility to customize any platform element, allowing for greater business efficiency. So, it doesn't matter if your company is a small production company or a multinational conglomerate – its needs will be met in full.

• Microsoft

Today, Microsoft offers Microsoft Azure as a BaaS solution. The platform provides an amazing set of powerful tools and products to create your own blockchain network in just one day, with high speed and flexibility. The Microsoft Azure workbench is mainly suitable for a legacy system's development or testing phases.

Blockchain as a service from Microsoft reduces the cost and deployment time by leveraging the integrations built into the platform. Moreover, the platform provides exceptional flexibility to customize any element of the platform to the needs of the business. What's more, when set up, a company gets a lot of development tools. All it takes is a choice of parameters or features to add to the company's network.

• Amazon

Amazon also offers its blockchain-based cloud service called Amazon Web Services (AWS). This solution offers a great way to implement blockchain, which allows a company to develop its network system with high scalability and performance. According to the company, it is one of the most convenient solutions to get their network up and running quickly.

BaaS AWS offers many solutions for centralized and decentralized architecture for crypto chain security as well, which is possible thanks to a high-performance ledger with cryptographically secured data formation. In the case of building a decentralized architecture, BaaS AWS provides companies with the best blockchain network environments, which automate and remotely manage processes and eliminate the need for control and organization.

• Oracle

Oracle offers Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service, a comprehensive cryptographic ledger technology platform. This platform provides access to blockchain services of various levels and formats to deploy new crypto ledger networks.

For a company to keep up with the pace of digital business, it needs to be able to work securely with multiple partners. Oracle blockchain provides a solution that allows all parties to come together in real-time to exchange data securely. Oracle also offers easy ways to implement blockchain solutions, including cloud and SaaS services.

Conclusion

BaaS technology opens up new opportunities that include crypto ledger networks as a component of an information technology-based digital enterprise. BaaS could be a key catalyst for a much deeper and wider adoption of blockchain innovation across business domains and industries, empowering businesses to develop their own blockchains, smart contracts, and other cutting-edge digital services and systems based on distributed ledger technology.