Microsoft Partners With Startup Truffle On Blockchain Developer Tools For Azure Cloud Service

Microsoft announced today that it is integrating tools built by the blockchain startup Truffle to its Azure cloud computing support to help developers build and manage enterprise blockchain software.

Truffle tools are available on Microsoft Azure because May 2 and according to the firm have been utilized by tens of thousands of individuals on the platform up to now.

"We actually believe in the power of block chain. This isn't some arbitrary thing that we are going to do because clients are forcing us," says Marc Mercuri, chief program supervisor at Azure Blockchain Engineering.

Truffle, among the earliest projects at the Brooklyn-based Ethereum incubator ConsenSys, started out producing tools for developers to help them build applications on Ethereum at a time when blockchain developer work required an extremely specialized set of skills.

Truffle officially spun away from ConsenSys this season and in May received a $3 million injection of funding in the organization to encourage business expansion.

Truffle tools have been downloaded more than 2.7 million times, along with also the new integration with Microsoft implies that Azure clients, including major firms like Adobe, HP, and the International Hotels Group in addition to legions of smaller projects, will be able to build on private or public Ethereum blockchains with support from Microsoft.

"What we are doing with this venture is extremely exciting, because it opens up all of those programmers to Truffle also it opens Truffle around all of the services that Microsoft provides," Coulter says.

One of Azure and Truffle's recently integrated services, an extension to Microsoft's Visual Studio Code, helps programmers produce wise contracts and test them before deploying them. Another new service is intended to help teams monitor the operation of all blockchain programs in real time.

Of course, Azure is not the only web services platform to adopt blockchain in recent months. Amazon Web Services offers its blockchain providers and has partnered with Kaleido, yet another ConsenSys project, on a market for blockchain tools for companies. Oracle also includes its own business blockchain platform, and Salesforce introduced its iteration of a blockchain programmer tool last month.