There are always technological obstacles in any Digital transformation and it is a common occurrence. But blockchain is rather unique, in that the more around the business model and strategy and less around the technology for adoption. Another obstacle is bringing together the various parties and agreeing about the type of data and the amount of data they want to share, as well as the standards by which they will be sharing. Standards of data are as important as data. Though, there is progress towards bringing more transparency to the industry. However, the focus should be more on work that has to be done on standards to scale this to the point where it becomes ubiquitous.
There are costs associated with any technology or business transformation. When it comes to blockchain, at least from the technology point of view, the investment is usual and in line with normal Digital transformations. A major technological transformation is moving core systems of record that exist to a new-shared source of record. However, when it comes to the size and scope of blockchain technology, it is similar to a normal IT transition.
There are several forms of blockchain-like public, private, permission-ed and hybrid. In a permission-ed blockchain, you have known actors operating and running the network. They allow the network to run on behalf of a consortium of organizations, or a single organization, if that is in the business model. Another is permission-less, where effectively anyone can join and participate in running the network. On the permission-less side, the data is always public. We need some infrastructure — not just the technology, but also the foundation pieces to achieve widespread adoption by across hundreds and maybe thousands of participants. The definition of “ubiquitous” is challenging. For the supply chain, we will see greater adoption across multiple industries over the next five to 10 years.