Google’s cloud services are to be used to test blockchain technologies for banks, an area where IBM Corp, Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc have been courting clients for the past year.
Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC has employed Google servers in a trial of a new blockchain application for clearing and settlement, consulting firm GFT Group said in a statement yesterday.
The company’s cloud services are also to be used by other bank clients of the firm, Stuttgart, Germany-based GFT said.
GFT is a member of Google Cloud Platform’s Partner Program.
Until now, IBM and Microsoft have been most active in rolling out special developer tools and inviting banks and start-ups to test the new database technology in their massive data centers. Amazon, a leader in cloud service, has also been working with blockchain start-ups.
The blockchain is a distributed ledger where multiple companies — such as banks — can record transactions securely.
The database’s strength lies in its trustworthiness: the difficulty of reversing or changing any transactions that have been recorded.
By facilitating trust and collaboration, the technology promises to make many industries more efficient and reduce costs on everything from international money transfers to paying a supplier.
As companies in the financial, supply-chain, healthcare and other industries rush to try out blockchain, they are opening up a potential new growth area for cloud-services players, like Alphabet Inc’s Google. Testing in the cloud is often easier and can be done faster than tests on a bank’s own computers.
If the tests are successful, cloud services could potentially play a role in blockchain deployments, since a database shared by multiple companies is more easily managed in the cloud.
Worldwide, the public cloud services market should reach US$204 billion this year, up from US$175 billion last year, researcher Gartner Inc said.
Taiwan’s long-term economic competitiveness will hinge not only on national champions like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) but also on the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies, a US-based scholar has said. At a lecture in Taipei on Tuesday, Jeffrey Ding, assistant professor of political science at the George Washington University and author of "Technology and the Rise of Great Powers," argued that historical experience shows that general-purpose technologies (GPTs) — such as electricity, computers and now AI — shape long-term economic advantages through their diffusion across the broader economy. "What really matters is not who pioneers
In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent: a prototype of a machine capable of producing the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence (AI), smartphones and weapons central to Western military dominance, Reuters has learned. Completed early this year and undergoing testing, the prototype fills nearly an entire factory floor. It was built by a team of former engineers from Dutch semiconductor giant ASML who reverse-engineered the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, according to two people with knowledge of the project. EUV machines sit at the heart of a technological Cold
TAIWAN VALUE CHAIN: Foxtron is to fully own Luxgen following the transaction and it plans to launch a new electric model, the Foxtron Bria, in Taiwan next year Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車) yesterday said that its board of directors approved the disposal of its electric vehicle (EV) unit, Luxgen Motor Co (納智捷汽車), to Foxtron Vehicle Technologies Co (鴻華先進) for NT$787.6 million (US$24.98 million). Foxtron, a half-half joint venture between Yulon affiliate Hua-Chuang Automobile Information Technical Center Co (華創車電) and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), expects to wrap up the deal in the first quarter of next year. Foxtron would fully own Luxgen following the transaction, including five car distributing companies, outlets and all employees. The deal is subject to the approval of the Fair Trade Commission, Foxtron said. “Foxtron will be
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) last week recorded an increase in the number of shareholders to the highest in almost eight months, despite its share price falling 3.38 percent from the previous week, Taiwan Stock Exchange data released on Saturday showed. As of Friday, TSMC had 1.88 million shareholders, the most since the week of April 25 and an increase of 31,870 from the previous week, the data showed. The number of shareholders jumped despite a drop of NT$50 (US$1.59), or 3.38 percent, in TSMC’s share price from a week earlier to NT$1,430, as investors took profits from their earlier gains
RSS