Accelerating Digital Transformation with Blockchain Technology

By Catherine Doyle, Enterprise Sales Director, Dell EMC Ireland

Value of Big Data

In today’s digital era, business success is increasingly tied to extracting value from data. With data being the new currency fuelling digital transformation, exploiting its untapped potential is now a critical pathway to success for all organisations, in all sectors. For data is now the foundation for fostering growth and innovation.

However, many businesses in Ireland face some fundamental obstacles in harnessing the power of data.  Many of those relate to the nature of the data itself. Big Data appears to be restricted by access, authenticity and above all monetization challenges.

Although our data has significant worth, organisations have issues unlocking that value because they don’t hold ownership over it.

Fortunately for those looking to be at the forefront of digital transformation, new innovative technologies are helping to overview barriers in becoming a successful digital business. And it is difficult to find a technology with more ramifications on Big Data than blockchain.

Introducing Blockchain

Essentially a data structure, blockchain is a collection of ‘data blocks’, each of which maintain a digital ledger of transactions between a distributed network of entities, in a ‘chain’. Imagine a distributed ledger across multiple nodes and users, that uses cryptography to allow all stakeholders to amend or approve transaction data blocks, without the need for a central regulator or authority, and yet maintain a permanent record.

As Dell EMC sees it, blockchain opens up a world of opportunity for Big Data. Sharing data through blockchain technology can not only help in unlocking new enterprise value for organisations but it can also address three of its unresolved challenges: controlling data, ensuring data credibility, and building universal exchanges.

Simply put, the greatest value of blockchain brings isn’t in what it is, but in what it enables.

With its decentralised nature, blockchain enables the equitable access to data for all parties involved in a transaction, leading to quicker data acquisition, quality, sharing, governance, and ultimately analytics. Blockchain also serves as a digital transaction register, in which all details of a transaction are stored in a single ‘data block in the chain’ – removing the need for data integration form all systems, at all points.

Perhaps of most importance, it puts the power of data back in the hands of customers and organisations.

Fostering Digital Transformation and Disruption

In leveraging data to the full, entrepreneurs can create new business models or transform existing business operations to outperform their competition. Indeed, industry leaders have begun to modernise business processes through the early adoption of blockchain technology. And the results have been impressive.

Businesses have witnessed better collaboration for data exchange that have accelerated the development of smart cities and is transforming mainstay industries such as healthcare and financial services.

Digitising health records on blockchain, for example, provides patients and care providers with secure access to medical data. In using blockchain technology in the agriculture sector, a trustworthy traceability system can be fostered from the farmer to the consumer.

But this transformation has not always been seamless. New blockchain-enabled start-ups are causing significant disruption in the financial services sector by giving customers access to crypto-currencies and reducing the number of intermediaries involved in payment transaction processes. This has led a significant reduction in transaction costs, faster transfers, and enhanced transparency for all those involved in the payment chain.

Banks and insurance companies are now responding to this change and understand the need to become disruptors, rather than be disrupted. CIOs across the banking sector are now increasingly leveraging blockchain technology to accelerate IT transformation. Recent reports suggest that by doing so, eight of the world’s largest investment banks could, on average, make savings of up to 30%.

Transformation Partner

For those both in and beyond the financial services sector who are struggling with the pace of change fostered by blockchain technology, help is at hand. At Dell EMC we are dedicated to unlocking the growing value of data for all organisations throughout Ireland.

We’ve developed a set of services which help organisations to determine when and where blockchain can add most value to their business. From identifying opportunities for its use in application development to creating a modern IT infrastructure that supports its adoption, Dell EMC is well positioned to help businesses transform with blockchain technology.

With the added business value of blockchain due to reach €2.5 trillion by 2030, a new dawn with immense possibility is on the horizon. Businesses can either leverage this new technology as a key enabler of digital transformation or be left behind.

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