Blockchain & SAM
A nice read from Jaime Marijuan Castro - for the first time, this is where I have seen someone postulate the indelible electronic link that can be forged in blockchain between the request, the purchase and the deployment - using the smart contract to enforce licence terms and conditions.
If we consider the software request, the purchase order and the software installation as separate entities (or atoms), then Blockchain has the potential to create a new molecule.
The full article can be read here: https://www.ibm.com/blogs/insights-on-business/electronics/blockchain-for-software-asset-management/
PS: As a concept, this is not new (i.e. the idea of aligning the above entities) and indeed, the technology currently exists to limit deployments - so while the theory and technology above appear compelling, just which software vendor will be the first to market and enforce contractual terms and conditions through blockchain?
This would be a cultural sea-change - that, and end users would be required to have greater faith in bit-coin to consider it a viable mode of commercial exchange. That though, might help organisations legitimately move software purchases back to a CAPEX purchase - even if the software was as-a-service.
As ever, your thoughts are welcomed.
Rory, this doesn't need to be Bitcoin based. IBM has been pioneering a business based Blockchain architecture that is now a Linux Foundation project called HyperLedger. This is quite an exciting idea but as The article hints at, would need some standardization. One thing for sure though. If a blockchain model was adopted for, at a minimum, logging and recording contracts digitally, then we could get rid of the problem of lost, definitive, contracts that are often a factor in Supplier audits. Happy to chat to you further about this as it's something I have been thinking about recently.
Is your cloud bill too high? Wanna know why?
7 年Frank Bartels, you'd want to read this