Blockchain has moved rapidly from the basement into the conference room. Soon it will be in the board room. The demand for blockchain-enabled solutions will expand dramatically as its strategic value to the enterprise becomes more widely understood and appreciated.

As an avocational crypto miner and blockchain enthusiast, I must admit that I’m a bit surprised by the speed with which blockchain for business has leaped forward into the modern enterprise.

So what does this leap forward mean? Well, it means that any blockchain application you develop must be fully tested and enterprise-ready.

And that means you will need to ask the same questions you would ask about any other component in your IT portfolio: Has it been thoroughly tested for security, compliance, resiliency, interoperability and usability? Will it fit smoothly into your existing enterprise architecture? How will you monitor and measure its effectiveness and value to the organization?

Now that blockchain offers real value to business organizations, it’s time to begin digging deeply and asking those hard questions.

Because here’s the hard truth about enterprise-grade blockchain: Making it work requires a comprehensive set of skills, such as UI/UX design, mobile platforms, analytics, security, external application integration and quality assurance to name a few — and our blockchain team at Chateaux has those skills. We’re developing blockchain solutions using Hyperledger, the open source collaboration hosted by the Linux Foundation. That gives us a huge advantage, since Hyperledger was created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies.

And those skills have propelled us into the coveted IBM Blockchain Partner program, designating us as part of an elite group of firms with proven capabilities in building enterprise-ready blockchain applications, supporting blockchain solutions, designing architecture and deploying software.

As you can see, I’m a blockchain evangelist. I’m part of a new generation of developers and architects who foresee a major role for blockchain in the dynamic global IT ecosystem. I will be writing more about blockchain over the course of 2018, and I hope you will find my posts interesting and useful.

Blockchain for business is a growing phenomenon. We’re ready to help you leverage the awesome power of blockchain and put it to work in your business with the same levels of security, functionality and reliability you rightfully expect from all of your enterprise-ready solutions.

— Vijay Rathna is Director of Enterprise Apps at Chateaux. He is a blockchain architect and crypto analyst.