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Microsoft eliminates Azure Blockchain Service

It’s official: on 10 September 2021, Microsoft’s Azure Blockchain Service will be cancelled

The company itself reports this in a new document published a few days ago on docs.microsoft.com.

The document states:: 

“Important

On September 10, 2021, Azure Blockchain will be retired. Please migrate ledger data from Azure Blockchain Service to an alternative offering based on your development status in production or evaluation”.

The alternative blockchain being suggested to migrate projects already developed on Azure Blockchain Service is that of Quorum, the blockchain developed by JP Morgan and acquired some time ago by ConsenSys

Quorum is an open-source platform dedicated to companies based on Ethereum. 

So effectively Microsoft is suggesting to its Azure Blockchain Service customers to migrate to an open-source solution based on Ethereum. 

Quorum Blockchain Service is actually managed by ConsenSys on Azure, which supports Quorum as a distributed ledger technology. It is even defined by Microsoft itself as: 

“An enhanced version of the GoQuorum Ledger technology used in Azure Blockchain Service”. 

Why Microsoft is abandoning Azure Blockchain Service

This decision by Microsoft does nothing but clearly show how centralized blockchain services really make little sense

Indeed, distributed ledger technology is no more efficient than other technologies. Its main strength lies in its decentralization, so a centralized blockchain offers virtually no real advantage to its users. 

The move to Quorum, which is based on Ethereum’s decentralized blockchain, is emblematic of how decentralized blockchains have a distinct advantage over centralized ones, since their main strength lies in decentralization, which makes them virtually immutable, with a high guarantee of this. 

It is also extremely interesting that a company like Microsoft has realized this. At this point, it is not unreasonable to imagine that other companies, such as Amazon or IBM, which have been working in recent years on solutions based on distributed ledgers that are not really decentralized, could follow Microsoft’s example, and migrate users of blockchain services to projects based on decentralized networks such as Ethereum. 

 

Eleonora Spagnolo
Eleonora Spagnolo
Journalist passionate about the web and the digital world. She graduated with honours in Multimedia Publishing at the University La Sapienza in Rome and completed a master's degree in Web and Social Media Marketing.
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