Salesforce Blockchain: Real or Hype?

It was fascinating to see the announcement of Salesforce Blockchain last week. My initial impression leaned to this being more vaporware than substance with marketing leading the product. But after digging in a bit deeper, I was pleasantly surprised. The strategy and the approach are unique and sound, and initial use cases seem well scoped. But some big questions remain and several technical aspects of the solution are unclear.

1/ Salesforce Blockchain is specifically targeting use cases related to business networks.

Business network use cases are among the most complex to solve in enterprise software as they transcend varied types of users spanning multiple organizations in the ecosystem. Examples include Supply Chain, Insurance Policies and Claims, KYC Vetting, Educational Attestations, OEM Sales & Service, etc. Business Networks have two key properties: a) multiple stakeholders need to collaborate to deliver a great and cohesive customer experience and b) Trust, Transparency, and Traceability are incredibly important to streamline operations and be in compliance.

There are definite gaps with current systems related to 360 views of customer, product, inventory, and orders across the ecosystem, data tampering, cyber-security, redundancy/availability, and cheaper/easier access to underlying data.

But when is Blockchain the right tool to address these relative to other options? Salesforce will need to educate their customers on the trade-offs involved. I doubt anyone knows at this point and we are likely a few years away from any type of mainstream adoption.

2/Salesforce uses HyperLedger Saw Tooth

Salesforce works atop Hyperledger Saw Tooth and has enabled a metadata layer for bi-directional integration. It has also developed three key components : a) Blockchain Builder to compose new permissioned chains, b) Blockchain Connect to integrate to the Salesforce Platform, and c) Blockchain Explorer and related APIs for third parties to connect and engage.

The presentation and available materials are super-light on the technical stack and the integration to HyperLedger. Who will host the blockchain nodes, how do private keys and validation work without increasing cognitive overhead for the user, what happens to exception handling, etc. are all open questions. Maybe these are too into the weeds, but we all know that the economics of managing distributed databases and the usability involved with cryptographic verifications are non trivial issues.

3/ The Blockchain Builder Looks Cool, But is it Enough?

Salesforce’s biggest differentiator has always been its underlying metadata driven declarative platform (Lightning) to compose and customize applications with clicks than code.

Using the Blockchain Builder embedded within Lightning, Admins can compose a permissioned blockchain by specifying the network, users, and permissions, modeling the distributed objects with custom schemas, and representing these within Salesforce as external objects. The Blockchain Builder being on the Lightning Platform means admins can write smart contract logic using declarative business rules. They can also run sophisticated queries, access blockchain events within Salesforce, and use other core capabilities of the platform.

While the Builder addresses the pain of immature tooling on platforms like Ethereum, it is likely not sufficient at this time to address advanced use cases involving tokenization, digital assets, use of third party oracles, and complex data sets with sophisticated smart contract logic (Think Parametric Insurance). Also, what will be the business logic on Hyperledger vs. Salesforce and how to keep them synced and consistent?

4/ There are Real Customer Pilots

There are a few customers in pilots (Arizona State University, S&P Ratings, etc.) and their use cases were specific and sharp. I think these are early stage POCs but it will be interesting to see how they evolve. The biggest questions in my mind are the comparisons to traditional alternatives in terms of cost, convenience, and impact. Can they conclusively answer the fundamental questions around what can be done with the Blockchain that might not be possible otherwise and with data as proof? As we have seen with other enterprise blockchain rollouts, jargon (immutability, verified, secure, transparency, etc.) goes only so far and real deployments test the theory of the case and put it to its ultimate test.

5/ This is a Space to Watch

Salesforce has put a stake in the ground on Blockchain and its vision is commendable. By embedding Blockchain within Lightning and making the complexity transparent, it is hoping to shine the spotlight on the business problem vs. the technology underneath.

The product is not generally available until 2020 and it is not clear how it will be licensed so there is some way to go before we can grasp what it might mean in terms of customer adoption and if it can deliver real value to customers. There are also other areas in enterprise blockchain (tokenization, Web3, open markets, etc.) that are interesting and it remains to be seen as to how they evolve.