The missing link holding the blockchain
In the next wave of digital transformation the main obstacle to exploiting blockchain technology is the huge gap between the amount of data generated and the ability of companies to harness and use it effectively.
First of all, what is a “Blockchain”?
In simple terms, a blockchain – which literally means a chain of blocks – can be defined as a public digital register. It is composed of computer data that facilitates the management of transactions. For example, in an open and distributed way, without the need of a central control.
By 2030, the global digital supply chain market is expected to grow to $ 13.68 billion (currently around $ 5 billion) with headlines suggesting that blockchain technology is set to play a crucial role in this growth. Allowing the sharing of data quickly and securely between different organizations.
Yet, the blockchain is a digital data store chain and by itself, it’s not the true force that will unlock the next wave of transformation. The real key to success lies in the collection of data and in the construction of the registers that will be the basis of digitisation.
Given the complexity of modern digital supply chains, the number of influencing factors, and the number of separate organizations that interconnect, the latest next-generation technologies are hugely interesting. In particular, the ability of blockchain to provide many stakeholders with access to reliable data across a supply chain network could lead to great advances.
Technologies, such as blockchain must be powered with data, which certainly are not the ones missing. What is missing in the blockchain is the huge gulf between the amount of data generated and the companies able to exploit and use that data and Blockchain cannot fill this gap, as it is not what it is designed for.
Accessing data in the supply chain is very challenging. Relevant data may reside in a separate business unit or external organization. Without the whole picture, it’s hard to maximize value. Data lakes are often seen as a potential solution, as they are a centralized repository designed to store, process and protect large amounts of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data. It can store data in its native format and process any variety of it, bypassing size limits. They allow the centralization of huge amounts of data, which means stakeholders can connect to the data lake and access the data they need. However, this approach can cause data privacy issues between organizations.
Some blockchain providers offer an improvement whereby participants can upload data and use permission-based rules to control which participants can see their data. However, because there is so much data, companies struggle to know and manage which data to share with which organization.
There is also the problem of the wide range of data types involved. For this challenge to be overcome, the data must first be structured in a way that allows many different types of data to be brought together consistently. For example, all data related to a submission must be accessible as a single data object or data product. This data product would include a range of data from different systems, with an ontology that allows the data to fit perfectly together.
Access to structured data products, as opposed to many streams of different types of data, enabled users to access and analyze all relevant data quickly and easily, executing more complex queries, and generating much information more in depth.
The real key to bridging the data chasm is digital twin technology. By enabling real-time models of real-world objects in the digital world, it makes them accessible to all participants in a supply chain via a central platform. Digital twins encompass all relevant data for a shipment, dynamically updating in real time with new data as the shipment progresses along the supply chain. Precisely, it offers a way to combine data from different sources to provide a single data product. That interested parties can access, subject to authorization, through the supply chain network, allowing them to access all data in a simple and effective way.
Unlike traditional object-oriented databases, the digital twin is temporary. It exists only for the duration of a shipment’s lifecycle, after which it disappears from the central platform.
The technology to make this scenario possible is intelligent data orchestration. Using the central digital twin concept, only relevant data is sourced from connected systems, with little or no effort on the part of the respective domains. Automated technology brings disparate data together, structuring it to form a complete data product and dissolving it at the end of its operational life cycle. Providing a solid data foundation to unlock the next generation of digital transformation.
