Microsoft Coco Framework Promises Speedy Blockchain Service

Microsoft has launched the ultrafast Coco Framework as it seeks to drive the uptake of Blockchain in enterprise networks.

Coco is being touted to organisations that require more than 1,600 transactions per second and Microsoft also said that it will launch the framework on GitHub in 2018 as an open source project.

Coco Framework

Microsoft’s announcement comes amid heightened interest in Blockchain from businesses who until now may have been put off by its challenges, such as throughput, latency, governance and confidentiality.

To ease such concerns, Microsoft is pitching Coco as easier to use than other Blockchain products and is targeting a number of industries including financial services, supply chain and logistics, healthcare and retail.

Indeed, JP Morgan Chase, Intel and R3 (database specialists) have agreed to start using the  framework in conjunction with their own blockchain ledger platforms.

“Blockchain is a transformational technology with the ability to significantly reduce the friction of doing business,” said Mark Russinovich, Chief Technology Officer of Azure at Microsoft.

“Microsoft is committed to bringing blockchain to the enterprise. We have listened to the needs of our customers and the blockchain community and are bringing foundational functionality with the Coco Framework. Through an innovative combination of advanced algorithms and trusted execution environments, like Intel’s Software Guard Extensions or Windows Virtual Secure Mode, we believe this takes the next step toward making blockchain ready for business.”

It is worth noting that the Coco Framework also sits on Azure, and it is compatible with any ledger protocol and can operate in the cloud and on-premise, on any operating system and hypervisor that supports a compatible trusted execution environment.

Blockchain Drive

Last year Microsoft revealed that the cloud was the best way to use the technology and it was working on an ecosystem to support it, namely Project Bletchley.

Microsoft had thrown its weight behind Blockchain technology in early 2016. Blockchain of course is best known as the system supporting Bitcoin.

This is because a blockchain is distributed database that can store complete transaction history of all types of records. This is potentially of interest to businesses, as well as those organisations involved in banking and finance circles.

Microsoft launched Microsoft Azure Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) in November 2015 and since then has been steadily working to bring blockchain to both governments and enterprises.

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