Blockchain powered efficiency on the horizon for 8common
Revolutionary software enabling unprecedented levels of functionality is on course to hit the ASX via fintech provider 8common (ASX: 8CO) after the company announced its membership in Hyperledger, a not-for-profit (NFP) organisation led by The Linux Foundation to improve upon outdated technology being used by modern businesses.
One of Hyperledger’s main objectives is to establish a “cross-industry open standard for distributed ledgers” thereby focusing ongoing research and development in one direction as opposed to dislocated projects working with different standards thereby undermining future cross-compatibility.
At the current time, 8common has three distinct products (Expense8, Perform8 and Realtors8) being marketed and sold to customers and generating around $1 million in the last financial year.
Expense8 is being used in 8 countries, as a user-friendly Travel & Expense Management system, tailored to the users exact organisational needs, business systems, and requirements.
Perform8 is a suite of innovative, online surveying solutions that are designed to assist business leaders at all levels to drive proactivity across business teams in 7 countries around the world.
Finally, Realtors8 is a toolkit for real estate agents to “power-market” their websites. The service delivers a comprehensive marketing platform for the real estate industry in both Asia and North America and is on course to continue its strong early adoption rate.
8common sold its remaining stake in its Realtors8 product earlier this month for A$4.09 million to Cloudaron Group Berhad but plans to continue working with its new owners as a partner, significant shareholder, and “continuing our journey with Realtors8 and its awesome team and clients in partnership with CJ [Ong Chang Jeh] and his team,” said Mr Nic Lim.
Membership status
By becoming a member of Hyperledger, 8common joins international powerhouse members such as IBM, Intel, the London Stock Exchange, State Street, Wells Fargo, Cisco, CLS, Digital Asset, Fujitsu, IC3, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, SWIFT, Vmware, and ANZ.
According to Hyperledger, its NFP status provides to scope to focus its efforts on collaborating with multiple entities in order to deliver the best possible platform for tech solutions to flourish.
Its self-proclaimed aim is to enable organisations to “build robust, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support their individual business transactions by creating enterprise-grade, open source distributed ledger frameworks and code bases.”
Looking into Hyperledger
Currently, Hyperledger is a global collaboration of more than 200 organisations including leaders in finance, banking, IoT, supply chain, manufacturing and technology.
The organisation’s open-source schematic allows for multiple companies to share within a common knowledge pool, which 8common is actively seeking to leverage for its own commercial purposes.
“8common is incredibly excited to join the Hyperledger family and we look forward to contributing our experience to design, develop and operationalise blockchain solutions,” said Mr Nic Lim, Executive Chairman of 8common.
“Our core business ‘expense8’, is well positioned to leverage blockchain to future-proof our platform and collaborate with fellow Hyperledger members to deliver new platforms,” he added.
With momentum now building behind Hyperledger in terms of market awareness and member base, the organisation wants to build on its two first market launches with more production-ready products.
“The community’s development efforts have led us to release two production-ready frameworks and we’ve grown to more than 200 members in that time. Members add a great amount of value to our ecosystem and I look forward to contributions by this new set of organisations as more production deployments take shape later this year,” said Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director of HyperLedger.
The news was also taken positively by investors as 8common shares climbed 18% by the early afternoon.