News

Microsoft Azure Blockchain Is Ending Sept. 10

• By David Ramel
• 05/13/2021

Microsoft is ending its Azure Blockchain Service in September, advising users to migrate to other offerings.

The company gave no reason for ending Azure Blockchain Service, which according to its web site is still in preview. The site's description of the service reads: "Build, govern, and expand blockchain networks at scale. Azure Blockchain Service Preview simplifies the formation, management, and governance of consortium blockchain networks so you can focus on business logic and app development."

Blockchain is a cryptographic list of records -- the blocks -- often used in implementations of cryptocurrency offerings like Bitcoin, along with other distributed ledger applications.

Notice of the move to abandon the service came only in documentation, which now includes this note under a "Migration guide" section: "On September 10, 2021, Azure Blockchain will be retired. Please migrate ledger data from Azure Blockchain Service to an alternative offering based on your development status in production or evaluation."

One such alternative offering recommended by Microsoft is the Quorum Blockchain Service from ConsenSys, with which it teamed up some six years ago to introduce Ethereum blockchain-as-a-service on Azure. ConsenSys just three days ago posted a blog post that included the following, but didn't mention that the Microsoft service is officially ending:

ConsenSys is working with Microsoft to offer an Ethereum-based managed blockchain service to their Azure customers. Both companies are working together to offer a service based on ConsenSys Quorum, an open-source protocol layer for developing with Ethereum. ConsenSys' collaboration with Microsoft is designed to offer customers and business partners an easy path to building multi-cloud blockchain services with additional permissions to ensure transaction privacy. The service will offer users the ability to easily set-up flexible blockchain nodes, thereby reducing the cost of enterprise blockchain deployment and developer programming time.

Microsoft didn't recommend switching to offerings from its cloud competitors, like Blockchain on AWS or Oracle Blockchain. Multiple media reports indicated Microsoft hasn't responded to inquiries about the move.