Oracle Enterprise Blockchain Platform and Alternatives

Blockchain technology transforms business-to-business or business-to-customer transactions trusted, secure, and effortless as it integrates all parties involved in the process. Information technology ventures are now offering advanced, cloud-ready, instantly deployable Blockchain services. The services are enterprise blockchain platform, private blockchain platform, decentralized public cloud blockchain platform, small to medium business blockchain platform, etc. Among many others, Oracle blockchain is one of the leading blockchain-as-a-service providers that offer enterprise blockchain platform on the cloud. Read on to know more about Oracle blockchain and its use cases. Here, you will also get to understand the technology behind it and some of its alternatives.

In this context, Dappros blockchain-as-a-service offers multimodal technology to integrate blockchain easily into any businesses or digital transactions and make it more secure using the Dappros tokenization platform.

What is Oracle Enterprise Blockchain Platform?

Oracle enterprise blockchain platform offers you a pre-assembled platform to manage and run a distributed ledger that is fully tamper-proof. Oracle cloud blockchain platform also allows you to build, store, and run smart contract programs in a blockchain.

Service administrators can access the Oracle public or private blockchain platform web portal to configure the blockchain network or watch over the operations. Being a blockchain-as-a-service platform, Oracle enterprise blockchain is highly user-friendly. The operator only needs to perform simples steps, like instance creation. Afterward, the Oracle enterprise blockchain platform takes over and automates service lifecycle tasks as follows:

  • Service management
  • Blockchain network patching
  • Backup and restore for the blockchain network

Oracle business blockchain platform includes the business logics that are smart contract codes. A network made of validating nodes (peers) update the decentralized or centralized distributed ledger. Nodes also respond to queries through smart contract code execution. The process summary is as follows:

  1. REST API calls and client SDKs enable the external applications to request transactions or run queries.
  2. As a result, select nodes execute smart contracts.
  3. More than one nodes endorse the outcome through its digital signatures.
  4. After verification, data further goes to the ordering service.
  5. Once multiple nodes reach a consensus regarding the transaction order, the order goes to the next phase.
  6. Cryptographically secured transaction results enter the stage where automated programs group them as tamper-proof data blocks.
  7. These data blocks would go to peer nodes for validation and then finally appear on the decentralized ledger.

What Technology does Oracle Business Blockchain Platform Use?

The Oracle cloud blockchain platform is a package of technologies that allows you to create, run, and manage an entire production-ready Hyperledger Fabric-based blockchain network. Followings are the technologies that you can expect from the Oracle enterprise blockchain platform:

  1. Oracle Cloud Platform

Oracle private blockchain platform is a component of the Oracle Cloud platform that you can use for your enterprise. All the necessary services, tools, and technologies that a cloud blockchain platform should have come pre-installed with the Oracle business blockchain platform. Oracle offers the following underlying services and technologies:

  • Containers on the cloud for your application and its dependencies
  • Clustered CPUs for cloud computing
  • Cloud platform management console
  • Logs and information analytics for troubleshooting and gauging operations performance
  1. Hyperledger Fabric

To promote a worldwide collaboration of blockchain technologies, the Linux Foundation started an open-source project, which we know as the Hyperledger Fabric. Oracle is also a member of this venture. To leverage open-source, and manage flexible interoperability with the core protocols, the Oracle business blockchain platform utilizes Hyperledger Fabric. Oracle has chosen Hyperledger Fabric for their blockchain-as-a-service offering for the following reasons:

  • Many industries accept the open-governed community for the enterprise blockchain platform.
  • Being a member, Oracle can participate in meetings and technical committees for Hyperledger Fabric.
  • You can set up a permissioned blockchain network with controlled membership services.
  • There are absolutely no requirements for cryptocurrency.
  • Hyperledger Fabric-based private blockchain platform is highly programmable through containers and smart contracts for business process automation.
  • Make your cloud blockchain platform a modular system where membership services, consensus protocols, and data storage components become plug-and-play.
  • You can scale up the private blockchain platform as you want with a complete focus on blockchain data confidentiality and privacy.
  1. Identity and Access Management

The Oracle cloud blockchain platform offers you a high degree of access security through Identity and Access Management or IAM. Some of the features of IAM technology are:

  • Your private blockchain platform administrator can decide who or which group will have access to the blockchain resources.
  • You can also configure who has which type of access to the enterprise blockchain platform.
  • Your administrator can also define which resources are available to a specific user or a group of users.
  1. Identity Cloud Service

Identity Cloud Service or IDCS allows you to set up new users or user groups who will be able to access certain information in your business blockchain platform. A few features of IDCS include the followings:

  • You can assign specific users the necessary permission they need to access the blockchain network.
  • You can also designate definite roles for your employees to control their usage of the Oracle blockchain-as-a-service platform.
  • It provides services like identity governance and single sign-on (SSO).

Additional security protocols like SSH and HTTPS also protect your business’s private blockchain platform.

  1. Public & Private Blockchain Platform

Most popular cryptocurrency developers maintain the cryptosystem on a public blockchain network, which follows the rules or consensus algorithms. Anyone can participate in these blockchain networks or tokenization platform without any restrictions.

Though built on open-source Hyperledger Fabric, the Oracle blockchain-as-a-service offers a completely permissioned or private blockchain platform for enterprises.

  1. Enhanced REST APIs

REST APIs allows effortless integration with enterprise IT software and tools while facilitating the following blockchain services:

  • Subscribing to an event
  • Configuring blockchain
  • Administrating blockchain
  • Monitoring transaction rates
  • Overseeing the blockchain network health
  • Extracting vital statistics critical for performance metrics
  1. Third-Party Certificates

The Oracle enterprise blockchain platform allows acceptance of verified third-party Certificates. It helps your company to onboard clients and vendors quickly through automated certificate verification.

  1. OCPU

It is the measuring unit for the Oracle business blockchain platform usage by its clients. OCPU denotes a specific CPU capacity similar to one core of an Intel Xeon processor with HT technology. Each OCPU means the computing is equivalent to two hardware execution threads of the Intel Xeon processor.

Sometimes, OCPU could also mean the processing power of one Oracle SPARC processor. In the case of Oracle SPARC processors, one unit of OCPU means eight hardware execution threads.

What Are the Use Cases and Clients?

The clients of the Oracle enterprise blockchain platform are utilizing blockchain technology in many industries to cater to the need for trusted, tamper-proof, and irrefutable data or transactions. Blockchain is being used in many sectors like pharmaceuticals, health care research, financial services, and supply chain.

Some of the clients of the Oracle cloud blockchain platform are Retraced, MTO, Healthsync, Finotek, Ajib, SERES, iPoint, Ciurculor, IntellectEU, Certified origins, etc. Followings are the notable use cases and clients of the Oracle cloud blockchain platform in 2021:

  1. HACERA Use Oracle BaaS for Covid-19 Trusted Data Collection

MiPasa is a data collection and analytics platform from HACERA. It uses a heterogeneous blockchain network to help scientists and Govt. officials in the right decision-making through a decentralized, trusted, and verifiable data source.

  1. HHS Use Oracle BaaS for Tamper Proof Covid-19 Test Results

Using the OCI API Gateway, Abbott Labs Abbott’s NAVICA mobile app is based on Oracle private blockchain platform. HHS’s goal was to get Covid-19 test results on a real-time basis without compromising its authenticity. HHS stored the test results in the Oracle Government Cloud with FedRAMP authorization.

  1. Retraced Use Oracle BaaS for a Supply Chain Management Tool

Retraced uses the cloud blockchain platform offerings from Oracle to build a supply chain management application. This app helps fashion companies verify and map their business data, such as:

  • Raw materials which are up to the standards
  • Top-quality fabric dyers
  • Trusted textile manufacturers
  • Costume and fashion designers
  • Qualified factories & warehouses

QR code-based verification and data sourcing technique make it easier for fashion brands to collect data about the supply chain and analyze further to establish a sustainable business. Customers can also scan the QR code and get access to product information like environmental sustainability and ethical sourcing.

Retraced also offers autonomous scale-up and scale-down techniques by merging Oracle Autonomous Database with Oracle business blockchain platform.

  1. Circulor Use Oracle BaaS to Establish Traceability & Transparency

Circulor is on a mission to establish transparency and traceability in industrial supply chains. They record and distribute data related to minerals and other raw materials using distributed ledger technology. The Oracle cloud blockchain platform proves to be beneficial for the Circulor as they could instantly deploy production-ready blockchain without the need of hardcoding the entire platform from scratch.

  1. AtCash Use Oracle BaaS to Offer KYC Services

AtCash offers personal identification services through blockchain technology. Their service is built on the Oracle enterprise blockchain platform. The company simplifies financial services account creation or deletion by making it completely digital. AtCash offered crucial services like remote notarization and digital onboarding during the Covid-19 pandemic. AtCash is the world’s first online notarization services provider based on a tokenization platform. AtCash utilizes a state-of-the-art Oracle cloud storage solution and a permissioned Hyperledger Fabric platform which is an open-source private blockchain platform.

Oracle Blockchain Pricing and Its Competitors

Oracle business blockchain platform offers budget forecasting with an OCPU-based pricing standard. You can efficiently scale down your blockchain instance to lower the cost when it is not in use or there are very few customers. Following is a pricing chart for the Oracle blockchain-as-a-service:

Oracle Enterprise Blockchain Platform
Product Type Unit Price in USD Unit/ Metric
OCI+Blockchain Platform Cloud Service-Standard 0.215 OCU/Hour
OCI+Blockchain Platform Cloud Service-Enterprise 0.4301 OCU/Hour
OCI+Blockchain Platform Cloud Service-Storage 70.4 TB Capacity/Mo

Blockchain technology is developing faster and changing the Information Technology ecosystem. Many companies are emerging as a blockchain-as-a-service provider and amongst them, some are tech giants. The competitors of the Oracle enterprise blockchain platform are Dappros, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Amazon, HP, Huawei, SAP, Corda, Dragonchain, Appinventiv, Factorm, Innominds, etc.

Alternatives to Oracle Business Blockchain Platform

Dappros is one of the best alternatives as a blockchain development platform for enterprises as it offers affordability, a simple user interface, and additional business productivity features. The followings are good alternatives when you are looking for a blockchain-as-a-service provider:

  • Dappros BaaS

If you are looking for a cloud blockchain platform that should be highly flexible, scalable, and yet within your business’s blockchain transformation budget, Dappros is the best service provider. Some of the features are:

  1. Dappros is capable of integrating blockchain within five minutes.
  2. Your enterprise’s in-house apps can interact with the blockchain through REST JSON API integration.
  3. The best tokenization platform for NFTs.
  4. Highly secure as it is built on Ethereum blockchain.
  5. You get advanced web portal access for monitoring and metrics analysis.
  6. Users can access crypto wallets effortlessly.
  7. Your business gets access to mobile apps with social media integration.

 

  • IBM Cloud Blockchain Platform

IBM blockchain development platform features are:

  1. Offers blockchain networks such as public, permissioned, and consortium.
  2. Smart contract execution programming supports Go, Java, and JavaScript.
  3. Chaincode starts and oversees ledger entries through transactions from external applications.

 

  • SAP Business Blockchain Platform

Leonardo is the marketing name for SAP blockchain services. Its features include the followings:

  1. Completely deployed on the cloud and client do not have to maintain IT hardware, software, or IT specialists.
  2. Leonardo enables the development of a permissioned or consortium-type blockchain network.
  3. SAP HANA blockchain allows businesses to connect external blockchain networks to in-house SAP HANA database.

B2B or B2C Transactions Made Easy with Blockchain

After going through this write-up, you will have sufficient information about the Oracle cloud blockchain platform. It is an in-depth analysis of Oracle blockchain-as-a-service, which covers attributes like basic technology, pricing, use case scenarios, and alternatives to Oracle BaaS. One of the best feature-packed substitutes for the Oracle blockchain is the Dappros enterprise blockchain platform that offers affordable pricing.

Taras Filatov
Taras Filatov
Articles: 74

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