Gartner Highlights 3 Key Industries Blockchain To Soon Disrupt
Over the last few years, the blockchain technology has been on the radar of many in the form of cryptocurrencies. A recent survey by Gartner shows that the business impact of blockchain will be transformational across most industries within five to ten years. Even though CIOs are still not sure of the impact their businesses are going to have with the deployment of blockchain, as per Gartner’s survey, 60% of them admitted that they expect some level of adoption of blockchain technologies in the next three years. Although blockchain technology is going to touch a number of sectors, the survey reveals three key sectors which are going to be impacted the most: Banking and investment services industries, Gaming and Retail.
Banking and Investment Services
Banking and investment services industries continue to experience significant levels of interest from innovators seeking to improve decades old operations and processes. Nearly 18% of banking and investment services’ CIOs said they have adopted or will adopt some form of blockchain technology within the next 12 months and nearly another 15% within two years.
Blockchain technology is expected to alter the nature of multiple daily bank operations over the next decade. With the blockchain deployment, the transferring of assets will become way simpler, seeming like a next-door transfer. Banks are also likely to witness the creation and acceptance of digital tokens. However, before reaping the benefits of the said technology, some non-technological rituals must take place which include standards, regulatory frameworks and organization structures for blockchain capabilities.
Gaming
To surprise many, blockchain is going to have a huge impact on the fast-growing gaming industry. As revealed by the Gartner survey, the blockchain natives are launching solutions that allow users to create their own tokens to support the design of competition as well as to enable trading of virtual goods. The tokens provide gamers with more control over their in-game items making them more portable across gaming platforms.
“High user volumes and rapid innovation make the gaming sector a testing ground for innovative application of blockchain. It is the perfect place to monitor how users push the adaptability of the most critical components of blockchain: decentralization and tokenization,” said Christophe Uzureau, research vice president at Gartner. “Gaming startups provide appealing alternatives to the ecosystem approaches of Amazon, Google or Apple, and serve as a model for companies in other industries to develop digital strategies.”
Many might consider the deployment of blockchain on the gaming industry as waste but, as ridiculous as it may get, people have become more serious about their games and gaming life than their real ones, making gaming over $100 billion a year industry. This fact makes it compelling enough for the gaming industrialists to experiment with this burgeoning technology.
Retail
Retail is another one of the key industries which is going to extract the major benefits from the blockchain technology. Its deployment will be reflected in customer data management and its security, supply chain tracking and loyalty programs. The benefits will be multifold but the most vivid impact that will be observed will depend on supporting new ideas. As mentioned by Gartner, once the retail industry sees the amalgamation of the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain, the retail business models will be changed forever, impacting both data and monetary flows and avoiding centralization of market power.
As we move into the industrial revolution 4.0, the disruption from technology is going to be humungous and life changing. What remains to be witnessed is how different sectors embrace it and manifest themselves.
