Global tech market advisory firm, ABI Research, has found that technology giants IBM and Microsoft are the “clear leaders” in industrial blockchain-as-a-service (Baas) offerings.

The industrial blockchain-as-a-service competitive assessment examined companies offering BaaS solutions catering to industrial blockchain applications, including construction, pharmaceutical and life sciences, utilities, manufacturing, automotive, distribution, energy, and agriculture.

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Using ABI Research innovation and implementation criteria framework, the Industrial BaaS Competitive Assessment analyzed and ranked six industrial BaaS vendors, namely Alibaba, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP.

Industrial internet

For this competitive assessment, innovation scores examined industrial POCs, industrial internet integration, ecosystem support, current roadmap, and geographic reach. Implementation criteria focused on platform choice, developer resources, integration with legacy industrial, management tools, and pricing.

BaaS is a type of cloud-based solution for the development of blockchain applications. It serves as a launchpad for broader blockchain technology adoption, effectively providing developers with a functional environment in which to build, test, and run new blockchain applications without having to worry about building the infrastructure from scratch or hosting and managing it.

Innovation, implementation

“Both the BaaS markets and the digitalization of industrial markets are fairly nascent phenomena,” said Michela Menting, research director at ABI Research. “Often, the intersection of blockchain and industrial service offerings are only within the remit of large technology providers with mature cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) offerings. As a result, only large companies play in the BaaS market, and all have varying levels of service offerings.”

The overall result showed IBM leading on both the innovation and the implementation front. ABI Research found that the firm’s platform is open to a broad range of industrial verticals and has run a significant number of pilots and PoCs in the last five years, making it by far the most prominent BaaS provider in the space. It also offers a broad range of platform choices and provides multi-cloud integration, above and beyond the other offerings.

Microsoft was ranked second, as a mainstream vendor, due to its resource-rich, flexible development and management infrastructure for its BaaS offering. Oracle comes in a solid 3rd, also as a mainstream vendor, with good industrial ecosystem support and comprehensive management tools. SAP, Amazon, and Alibaba have robust BaaS platforms, but with a more limited industrial play than the Assessment leaders.