Why 90% of current enterprise blockchain platforms will require replacement - Gartner

By 2021, 90% of current enterprise blockchain platform implementations will require replacement within 18 months to remain competitive, secure and avoid obsolescence, according to Gartner, Inc.

"Blockchain platforms are emerging platforms and, at this point, nearly indistinguishable in some cases from core blockchain technology," said Gartner senior research director Adrian Lee.

"Many CIOs overestimate the capabilities and short-term benefits of blockchain as a technology to help them achieve their business goals, thus creating unrealistic expectations when assessing offerings from blockchain platform vendors and service providers.

Fragmented blockchain platform market

Today, the blockchain platform market is composed of fragmented offerings that often overlap or are being used in a complementary fashion, making technology choices confusing for IT decision makers.

"Compounding this challenge is the fact that blockchain platform vendors typically use messaging that does not link to a target buyer's use cases and business benefits," said Lee.

"'Transactions,' for example, was the term mentioned the most in relation to blockchain, followed by 'secure' and 'security.' While these may be functions of blockchain-enabling technology, buyers are still confused as to how these functions are achieved or what benefits blockchain adds compared to their existing processes.

Nonetheless, as enterprises' interest in blockchain technology increases, the number of blockchain platform vendors continues to increase with more new entrants.

"Due to the lack of an industry consensus on product concept, feature set, core application requirements and target market, we do not expect there to be a single dominant blockchain platform within the next five years. Instead, we expect a multiplatform world to emerge," said Lee.

The rapid evolution of the blockchain platform market

By 2025, the business value added by blockchain will grow to slightly more than $176 billion, then surge to exceed $3.1 trillion by 2030, according to a recent forecast by Gartner.

"Product managers should prepare for rapid evolution, early obsolescence, a shifting competitive landscape, future consolidation of offerings and the potential failure of early-stage technologies/functionality in the blockchain platform market," said Lee.