COUNTRY FOCUS: EGYPT
Rahman Al Thehaiban says that Oracle is
planning ahead to provide a big boost to
the market growth by helping businesses
develop their Blockchain strategy and
transformation roadmaps through its
Blockchain offering.
“We announced Oracle Blockchain Cloud
Service as part of Oracle’s comprehensive
Platform-as-a Service (PaaS) portfolio,” he
said. “By seamlessly integrating it with the
Oracle product portfolio, we help business
networks take advantage of most of their
current capabilities to overcome adoption
challenges and increase their ROI during
the process.
“We anticipate that the Blockchain
landscape will eventually reshape; more
service providers will come up, more alliances
will form, even new types of consulting
services will evolve, like legal firms to work on
legalising smart contracts.
“Blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT)
are considered in the ‘data in’ stream while
artificial intelligence (AI) is in the ‘data out’.
Blockchain as a platform could safeguard
against one of IoT’s biggest threats: security.
It would also allow IoT devices to participate
in business transactions and interconnect in
a reliable manner.
“At the same time, Blockchain creates
a gold mine of data for technologies
like machine learning and artificial
intelligence. Simply because Blockchain
is addressing the provenance of digital
assets, its historical states and interactions
throughout its lifecycle.
“Businesses across all sectors are expected
to be impacted by Blockchain. However, the
question here is how fast and to what extent
these sectors will overcome the challenges
coming with Blockchain adoption. This could
be a regulatory, business or a technology
preparedness challenge.
“As an example, the banking sector
will benefit immensely with Blockchain
innovation across many areas like payment,
clearing, and settlement and paper
intensive processes like trade finance.
Blockchain will radically change how assets
are maintained and stored, obligations are
discharged, contracts are enforced and risks
are managed.
50
INTELLIGENTCIO
“
FROM AN OPERATIONAL
PERSPECTIVE, BLOCKCHAIN CAN
ENABLE PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
FROM SIMPLE OPTIMISATION TO
TOTAL TRANSFORMATION.
“Furthermore, new business models may
evolve within the banking sector and
there will be an increase in competition
from non-banking players in areas such as
mobile payments and lending. Blockchain
is likely to intensify such competition,
as it will reduce technological barriers
for nonbanking entrants. Many other
enterprises will be revolutionising customer
experience and creating unique solutions
for smarter transactions. In addition,
similar to how the C2C (Consumer-To-
Consumer) models like Uber or Airbnb
revolutionised the market, Blockchain
will create the opportunity for more
disruptive business model and innovations
to become dominant and enhance the
market dynamics.” n
www.intelligentcio.com