Why Microsoft Wants 'Every Blockchain' on its Azure Platform

While Microsoft tested the waters with bitcoin payments at the tail end of 2014, the tech giant appears poised to be a far bigger player in the burgeoning market for solutions that harness its underlying blockchain technology.

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Since opening its Azure cloud computing platform to the ecosystem this October, Microsoft has added a steady stream of partners to its blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) solution – a product styled as a kind of 'sandbox' where partners can interact with different technologies, from smart contracts to blockchain-based tax reporting services, in a low-risk environment.

Far from starting with the biggest, venture capital-backed players, however, Microsoft has so far turned heads with its frequent, and often unpredictable, partnership announcements for the service.

For example, in October, Microsoft chose to debut its BaaS service not with later partners like $32m bitcoin startup BitPay or recordkeeping service Factom (infamous for its now stalled but well-publicized "partnership" with Honduras), but with a then-relatively unknown distributed applications company called ConsenSys.

Since then, Microsoft has backed efforts on all manner of blockchain services, from long-standing altcoin projects with novel blockchains (Emercoin) to 'build-your-own' blockchain solution providers (MultiChain).

However, according to Microsoft's director of technology strategy, Marley Gray, there won't be any shortage of new blockchain players added to its Azure platform, given that it is designed for development and testing.

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