5 reasons to explain why Azure Blockchain Service was shutdown
Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that Azure Blockchain Service will be retired September 10, 2021. Not much explanation was provided and, like me, you probably wonder why this service is shutdown. Here are 5 possible explanations.
1. Your business does not need it
Not all businesses need to have an internal blockchain to run and earn money. Blockchain sounds great from a tech perspective and we all dream of being the guy that is running one, but the truth is that you probably don’t really need one to earn money.
Implementing a blockchain is probably simply not needed.
2. Too expensive to run and operate
Azure Blockchain service is managed, and really helps in making it easy to deploy and operate. But, you still have to manage and operate many aspects of the blockchain: consortium, smart contracts, nodes, … and the service is not that cheap when you start to add everything up: compute, transactions, storage, data manager, …
All this will have an impact on your budget $$$.
3. Blockchain developers are too difficult to source
How many blockchain developers do you know ? I mean how many “Solidity” developers do you know ? Solidity is the language used to develop Smart Contracts. It is not necessarily complex, but there are not that many developers who embraced that language since it is a bit specific to Ethereum.
Sourcing a Solidity developer might not be easy, nor cheap.
4. Microsoft was not making enough money out of it
Blockchain is trendy, that’s for sure. But this does not mean it is mainstream and used by many people. Personally I have not met many people who really deployed Azure Blockchain in production. I wouldn’t be surprise if Azure Blockchain is not generating any profit at all for Microsoft, just because it is barely used.
Maybe it is simply not profitable for Microsoft.
5. You could simply use a normal database
Last but not least, this one is my preferred point, and I’m glad you reach that point because, yes, blockchain can actually be replaced by a simple database.
And it is not me saying it… it is Microsoft!
In a great white paper entitled “Building Enterprise-Grade Blockchain Applications with Azure Cosmos DB”, Microsoft explains why you actually probably do not need a Blockchain and can instead use Cosmos DB :
“Blockchains are often complemented by databases, but in some scenarios, a database solution like Azure Cosmos DB can supply the core characteristics of the blockchain itself. Whether you’re looking for an alternative or complementary solution to blockchain technology, the Azure Cosmos DB globally distributed, multi-model database service may be the answer.” — Microsoft
And here is the diagram, again provided by Microsoft, that explains when you can use Cosmos DB:
If you carefully look at this diagram, the only scenario where you need a blockchain is actually when the parties performing the writes are not trusted.
In all other situation, you can actually use a traditional database.
“Untrusted parties performing writes”, think about it and what it means for your business. In most situations, the parties that are writing data, are trusted : third parties, suppliers, banks, … In most cases, they are ALL trusted parties.
Conclusion
Why would you use something that you probably don’t need, that is super complex, that is difficult to get developers for, that is expensive, and that could probably be achieved with a simple database?
I seriously think that this question killed Azure Blockchain Service.
