Last week, Azure Blockchain – a new blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platform – was announced to be fully developed by Microsoft. This platform will reportedly allow developers to apply the latest trends in technology.

Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s head of corporate communications, revealed that the Blockchain not only “simplifies the formation, management, and governance of consortium blockchain networks”, but also supports users with complicated corporation network “in a few simple clicks”, or simply basic operations.

Furthermore, until now, Azure Blockchain Service can only connect to Quorum, an open source blockchain platform designed by JPMorgan Chase. Mark Russinovich, Azure Blockchain CTO explained: “Because it’s built on the popular Ethereum protocol, which has the world’s largest blockchain developer community, Quorum is a natural choice.”

In May 2018, Azure Blockchain Workbench was released by Microsoft Azure team to speed up the development process by automating infrastructure setup.

Last October, Microsoft Azure had teamed up with Nasdaq for framework integration in order to speed up the transactions.

Back at Mobile World Congress on Feb 25, Microsoft announced a new partnership with Telefónica – Spain’s biggest multinational telecommunications company – to apply blockchain and AI in designing enhanced services for telco customers.