What’s blockchain technology worth to your business? A Bank of America analyst said if that business is Microsoft, Amazon or Oracle, the burgeoning blockchain market could mean billions of dollars in additional revenue.
In a note, analyst Kash Rangan said the blockchain market could be a $7 billion opportunity for tech firms, although the analyst did not specify when blockchain would reach this mark because the industry remains in its early phases.
Rangan wrote that combining blockchain with a company’s current cloud computing system could have particular benefits for logistics. He noted that Amazon would “benefit from incremental cloud services demand from blockchain implementation, while improved supply chain tracking should make Amazon’s retail operations more efficient.”
According to CNBC, Rangan’s estimates assume that 2 percent of servers will be used to run blockchain, at $5,500 per server, per year.
The Bank of America analyst said Salesforce.com, VMware and real estate and mortgage players including Redfin, Zillow, LendingTree could also stand to benefit from blockchain implementation. So will IBM, which is already the world’s second-largest filer of blockchain patents. (Bank of America is no slouch in the blockchain patent department either.)
Other, nontech companies are also picking up on blockchain’s benefits. For instance, Amazon’s main competitor among online retailers, Walmart, announced last week it is requiring produce suppliers to input information about the sourcing and transport of their products via a blockchain tracking system Walmart built with IBM. Also, shipping giant FedEx, whose CEO sees blockchain as key to logistics, recently became a member of the Hyperledger blockchain consortium.
