Microsoft, Cisco, Huawei team up on blockchain data marketplace

Dive Brief:

Enterprise giants, including Cisco, Samsung, Volkswagen and Huawei are teaming up with Berlin-based open-source blockchain company IOTA for a secure data marketplace, reports Reuters. Data collected on IOTA's ledger will facilitate information flow between companies and reduce the 99% of the 2.5 quintillion bytes of data generated daily which is lost to the void for lack of a platform, according to the company.
Microsoft, Accenture, Fujitsu, Deutsche Telekom, Bosch and PwC will also take part in IOTA's marketplace, according to The Next Web. The marketplace demo will go live in January, allowing stakeholders to securely share and monetize data. "Ordinary netizens" will also have room to connect their IoT devices to the market and sell their data, reports TNW.
IOTA hopes the demo will provide enough feedback and insight to deploy a production-ready marketplace later next year, said Dominik Schiener, co-founder of IOTA, to CoinJournal.

Dive Insight:

Blockchain may be an infant technology, but big partnerships like this are pushing the tech into its next stage of maturity.

From Thanksgiving turkeys and Canadian marijuana sales applications to supply chain management, blockchain POCs and pilot projects are finding more niche roles to fill. Companies need to remain cautious, however, when investing in blockchain because only one-third of POCs actually have a strong enough foundation for future development and innovation.

But getting involved early means having a seat at the table and influence in how the technology is developed and applied in the enterprise.

IOTA's marketplace may be the most high-profile case integrating the ledger technology with the IoT, if the number of power players jumping on board shows anything. With the IoT set to add millions more devices with each coming year, a decentralized and public platform to consolidate all the data will offer organizations with Big Data capabilities a big market to tap into.

Upcoming changes to personal data protection and privacy regulations, however, will need to be taken into consideration as troves of data are moved onto the anonymous platforms. Noncompliance could prove costly.