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Kaleido, a startup that aims to help enterprises implement blockchain technology, has launched a new platform in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Kaleido Marketplace will provide tools and protocols for all the components of new blockchain projects, “from the app all the way to the chain,” founder and CEO Steve Cerveny told Forbes.
Commodities platform Komgo, whose network of financial institutions includes Citi, ING, Koch Supply & Trading, MUFG Bank, Societe Generale, Credit Agricole Group, BNP Paribas, and Shell, is a current client.
Kaleido is one of more than 50 blockchain projects overseen by ConsenSys, the blockchain technology company and incubator launched by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin in 2014. Kaleido launched in May of this year, offering blockchain-specific support to enterprises as part of its Blockchain Business Cloud platform. Cerveny sees the Kaleido Marketplace as the next evolution of this service.
“We knew that customers struggling to adopt blockchain needed more help than just the chain. We knew that they needed more advanced components [that were] easily deployed and pre-integrated,” he says.
The marketplace’s offerings are full-stack, meaning that they encompass everything from internal tools for developers to user-facing app interfaces, and are intended to make it easier for businesses to implement blockchain solutions quickly. There are options to help manage not only a blockchain network but also the network's associated infrastructure and protocols. This way, businesses can focus more on their operations and less on the complicated nuances of the technology.
“By building on an open blockchain system, Komgo can select from the best protocols in development across the ecosystem and use existing building blocks for an optimized solution,” Komgo CEO Souleïma Baddi said in a statement.
AWS has been a partner since Kaleido's launch earlier this year, and Kaleido worked with Amazon's blockchain team to create AWS integrations that would work for enterprise blockchain customers. Amazon, of course, is not the only big business exploring this space. IBM, Maersk, HSBC, Deloitte, and SAP have all been involved in enterprise blockchain projects.
Through the Kaleido marketplace, businesses have access to AWS services like private networking and data backup, other common blockchain services like HD wallets, and industry products like Chainlink (for smart contracts), Viant (for supply chain management), and OpenLaw (for legal contracts).
The company said in a statement that early adopters of the platform estimated that Kaleido eliminated 80% of the custom code that would otherwise have been required to build their blockchain solutions.
And through Kaleido’s partnership program, third-party technology providers will be able to promote their products in the marketplace, embed Kaleido within their own blockchain projects, or use Kaleido for consultations.
Greenfence Consumer, which organizes blockchain-based promotions and digital collectibles for companies like Sony, Fox, and Heineken, is one such partner. They’ve been using Kaleido for the last three months. “Kaleido just made our lives easier,” says Jonas Hudson, the company’s co-founder.
For Greenfence, using Kaleido has helped make blockchain development and innovation more accessible. This means that tech teams can get up to speed more quickly, and proofs-of-concept can turn into working projects more quickly.
“Kaleido, first and foremost, abstracts away a lot of the complexities of the Ethereum chain,” says Jon Labrie, Greenfence’s SVP of Blockchain Systems and Applications. “They abstract away complexities of Amazon cloud engineering…it's easy for me to communicate how it works to somebody who doesn't know anything about blockchain technology," whether that person is a new engineer or a major partner like Sony.
Anne Hale Miglarese, CEO of Kaleido partner Radiant Earth Foundation, says Kaleido helped her organization accelerate their blockchain proof-of-concept. Radiant Earth aggregates high quality satellite imagery for NGOs, and Miglarese predicts that other organizations like hers are not far behind. "I have no doubt that in three or four or five years, all of these geospatial platforms will probably have an implementation of blockchain," she says.
Ultimately, Miglarese hopes the Kaleido platform will ease friction within her organization's operations and give her better insight into the industry. "It's eliminating the pain points," she says.
