CMSWire: How Blockchain Is Enabling Digital Transformation

On January 31, 2022, Travis Hoyt was featured in a CMS Wire article titled, How Blockchain Is Enabling Digital Transformation. Preview the article below, or read the full article online here.

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Blockchain is not a new technology despite much of the hype about it in recent months. What is somewhat new is what’s behind the hype. It’s being driven not by the technology itself, but rather its applications and the digital workplace tools it enables.

For example, we have seen the key role that blockchain technology is playing in the enablement of Web3. But it is also playing a major role in the development of the metaverse and defining new ways to manage data, too. All of this has been facilitated by the evolution of blockchain technology itself.

The Future of Blockchain in Enterprise Businesses

The predominant focus of blockchain technology to date has been in the development and deployment of cryptocurrencies, tokens and other digital asset mediums with little impact on corporations and workplaces, said Travis Hoyt, chief technology officer at Minneapolis-based NetSPI, an information security provider.

But that is changing, Hoyt said, as companies start to look at the advantages of blockchain technology in areas of enterprise focus such as process flows, automation and simplification.

The result is that the blockchain market is expected to grow 68.4% over the next five years and become a key technology investment across the enterprise. There’s a substantial increase in hiring for blockchain-related skills, a number that is expected to continue to grow.

The innovations that stem from adoption of this technology will create unique opportunities, Hoyt said, but also come with risks that many organizations are not ready to address. Blockchain-based architectures share many similarities to traditional architectures, web applications and APIs, and the underlying infrastructure is largely the same or very similar. But the introduction of a distributed data plane, smart contracts and consensus models will have a notable impact on the threat model for those deployments.

“It is clear that blockchain technology is here to stay,” Hoyt said. “As cities start to leverage it, or as corporations and governments look at its potential of operational efficiency, the allure of immutable data and the ability to have perfect transactional recollection increases.”

Data will also become easily accessible, he added, and will be a powerful driver of innovation.