90 Companies Join IBM and Maersk's Blockchain Supply Chain

IBM and shipping giant Maersk have recruited a sturdy crew for their global trade blockchain platform.

Revealed Wednesday, the companies have already signed up more than 90 firms for the platform since it was spun off from Maersk in January.

Leveraging Maersk's leviathan-like scale, TradeLens has attracted a wide variety of entities, ranging from dozens of port operators and customs authorities to logistics companies and even rival ocean-going carriers, such as Pacific International Lines, all of whom have been testing the platform.

To drive home the message that TradeLens is an open and neutral platform, IBM and Maersk have updated their marketing strategy, now describing the project as "Joint collaboration" rather than a joint venture.

While Maersk and IBM remain the only two shareholders, and both invested in the technology and jointly own the IP, White emphasized it is completely open to ecosystem participants.

TradeLens is built on the IBM Blockchain platform, which uses the open source relative of Linux, Hyperledger Fabric, and this presents a possible interplay with other IBM and Hyperledger projects.

"We have architected all of these solutions so that it's very easy for data to be exchanged between the two different blockchains - take TradeLens and IBM Food Trust for example - if clients were to be inclined," said Todd Scott, the vice president of global trade at IBM Blockchain.

In addition to the well-established supply chain payments platform TradeShift, which connects over 1.5 million companies across 190 countries, banking giant Citigroup is in stealth with a combined trade finance and supply chain platform which will leverage not only distributed ledger technology but also the internet of things and artificial intelligence.

Speaking to potential data privacy concerns for companies that compete with Maersk's subsidiaries, White said the Maersk side of the collaboration team is a distinct and separate entity with no involvement with the commercial activities of either Maersk Line or Damco.

Looking ahead, another possible blockchain interoperability play for TradeLens would be some of the trade finance blockchain platforms built on IBM Blockchain and Hyperledger, such as we.