Salesforce just got done with TrailheaDX 2019 this weekend. Algoworks was at TDX19 too, and oh boy, did we have fun! There was a bunch of new stuff announced at the event. A few of the major announcements by Salesforce at TrailheaDX were that the Lightning Web Components is now open-sourced, the new Responsible Creation of AI module was published by Trailhead, and Salesforce launched the new Trailmoji app. But Salesforce Blockchain was one announcement that stole the show and proved to be the most exciting highlight of the event.
Blockchain is a distributed public ledger that is used to manage transactions and keep a record of assets. It allows a network of users to record, verify and perform transactions in a secure manner. Blockchain helps in simplifying the creation as well as the exchange of transactions.
What Is Salesforce Blockchain?
Salesforce announced Salesforce Blockchain, a low-code platform enabling organizations to build blockchain networks, applications, and workflows. Though still in private beta, Salesforce Blockchain expands the reach of the Salesforce CRM platform. It allows developers to create reliable partner networks and securely share data. The platform helps in handling the complicacy of data integration and network communication.
Powered by Lightning, Salesforce Blockchain enables building and maintaining blockchain apps, flows and networks easily which can be connected to customer records directly within Salesforce. The intuitive UX in Lightning can be leveraged by partners and third parties that can easily be connected to the blockchain app or network. This helps with adoption which is a pivotal piece of the blockchain puzzle. What does this bring to the table for you? Well, you will not have to reach out to blockchain developers. Instead, any Salesforce developer or admin can use Salesforce Blockchain.
Is Your App Fit For Salesforce Blockchain?
One crucial part of Salesforce Blockchain is to get through with the process of identifying potentially valid use cases. When trying to figure out whether your app is a good fit for Salesforce Blockchain platform or not, don’t forget to ponder over these questions:
1. Is it required for the source of truth for app data to be a single set of records?
If the answer to this question is yes, then a distributed ledger like Blockchain is going to be of no help. It is not going to help your app manifest one single system of truth. In a distributed ledger, all partners have access to a similar copy of the ledger. No single ledger is the source of truth.
2. Does the application consists of a large number of partners who may or may not trust one another?
One benefit that Blockchain is known to deliver is that it has the ability to maintain secure relationships between various parties without the need to affiliate partners or their systems. The Blockchain network can take care of scaling to house a large number of partners on the network.
3. Does the application require to meet compulsions, like catering to the audit-ability or regulatory compliance, that would be simpler to achieve if all changes done in the data were deemed as individual entries? Does the app need a historical record of data and changes?
Blockchain issues changes to record data as additional entries on the ledger. If the answer to the above-mentioned question is yes, then this may be of some use in your application. If the answer is no, then the first thing you need to do is to determine whether the data managed in the ledger will be of any use for your app or not. Having clarity of what benefits you can reap from Blockchain is necessary, or it may not be the best way to save data for your application.
The platform is new and fresh. Being in a beta version still, the possibilities of the platform to bring out the latest features and aid to the developers and admins alike are immense. Meanwhile, if you are looking for a Salesforce consulting company, we are here to help. 🙂
References: moneycontrol, developer.salesforce, searchcloudcomputing
Pratyush Kumar
