Microsoft will retire Azure Blockchain Service on September 10, 2021

Back in 2015, Microsoft partnered with ConsenSys to offer Ethereum Blockchain as a Service (EBaaS) on Azure. It allowed enterprise clients and developers to have a single click cloud based blockchain developer environment. In 2019, Microsoft announced Azure Blockchain Service Preview which simplifies the formation, management, and governance of consortium blockchain networks so organizations can focus on business logic and app development.

Microsoft has now announced that Azure Blockchain Service will be retired on September 10, 2021. Microsoft also allows customers to migrate ledger data from Azure Blockchain Service to ConsenSys’ Quorum Blockchain Service. Quorum Blockchain Service (QBS) is a fully managed blockchain service that will provide a seamless migration experience for Microsoft customers.

Quorum Blockchain Service is a managed offering on Azure that supports Quorum as ledger technology.

• Managed offering – Quorum Blockchain Service has no extra management overhead compared to Azure Blockchain Service.
• Ledger technology – Based on ConsenSys Quorum which is an enhanced version of the GoQuorum Ledger technology used in Azure Blockchain Service. No new learning is required.
• Continuity – You can migrate your existing data on to Quorum Blockchain Service by ConsenSys. For more information, see Export data from Azure Blockchain Service

“Expanding our relationship with Microsoft helps organizations take advantage of ConsenSys Quorum and Quorum customer support to offer users an enterprise-grade managed blockchain service that can be effortlessly set-up and deployed,” said Joseph Lubin, founder & CEO of ConsenSys.  “We are excited to bring the awarding-winning Quorum product to Azure users as the next step in our collaboration with Microsoft.”

“By working closely with ConsenSys, we will be able to provide our customers with an easy way to deploy and manage their blockchain pilots and production use cases running on Microsoft Azure,” notes Mark Russinovich, CTO of Microsoft Azure. “This collaboration is designed to take the complexity out of managing the infrastructure (hardware & software) that is necessary to run enterprise blockchains.”

Source: Microsoft via: ZDNet