Hewlett Packard Enterprise to Launch Blockchain Product in 2018

Business technology firm Hewlett Packard Enterprise is launching a new blockchain service next year.

The formal reveal comes months after customers of the company – founded in 2015 after tech giant Hewlett Packard split in two – began software solutions built around the tech. Using distributed ledger startup R3's Corda platform as an underlying basis, HPE is planning to offer services around payments and identity, among others. The two companies publicly unveiled their partnership in June.

The initial product offering, dubbed the "Mission Critical Distributed Ledger Technology," is being pitched to enterprises as an extension of cloud-based services. It's also the first of what HPE indicated will be a number of product offerings that utilize blockchain.

"Enterprises interested in blockchain are realizing that public cloud alone does not always meet their non-functional requirements," the firm's blockchain director, Raphael Davison, said in a statement.

According to Fortune, HPE has already sold some versions of their produced privately to financial services companies.

Though an exact launch date wasn't set, HPE indicated that it would come in "early 2018." Additionally, the firm said that additional clients could gain access to testing environments later this year.

HP Enterprise image via Sergiy Palamarchuk / Shutterstock